What happens when you create a platform with a vision, then lose your sight?
The hot topic of the past 24 hours has been centered on whether or not STEEM Backed Dollars (SBDs) are helpful or harmful, or whether they should even continue to exist. What will follow is my opinion from my own perspective as an entrepreneur, investor, and writer/blogger.
Onboarding as a Goal
Steemit.com was to be the website to bring non-crypto users into the crypto world and to give them the opportunity to acquire cryptocurrency tokens by simply doing what they normally do on social media. As new users join the platform, they will learn about the system, the tokens, and how these tokens are used.
The other purpose of having a social media interface for the STEEM blockchain was to create transactions between accounts by simply upvoting content – and to also encourage other transactions, such as payments for goods and services. After all, STEEM and other cryptocurrencies are supposed to be...currencies.
The STEEM Backed Dollar (SBD) was supposed to be pegged to the actual U.S. Dollar in order to facilitate transactions between parties based on a relatively stable price metric. This SBD allows users and entrepreneurs alike to send and receive payments without the constant need to calculate price conversions for STEEM and other currencies. Having this option available, in my opinion, is necessary for broader adoption from the mainstream – from non-crypto users.
Why SBDs are Necessary for Widespread Adoption and Use.
Thinking as a businessman, it would be a nightmare to have to do full accounting with a non-pegged, volatile cryptocurrency that cannot be directly converted into a native, government fiat currency. Why does it need to be converted into government fiat? Because governments still issue fiat currencies and demand their use via taxation. As a result, businesses within those jurisdictions (which is nearly all of them) must account for their earnings, report them in the native currency, and pay the taxes that are due.
Without a reliable pricing and conversion mechanism, accounting can become a nightmare.
Businesses that want to accept payments for STEEM or SBDs need a reliable way to price their goods and services. Currently, there is an option to accept payment as SBDs, which are equivalent to essentially one U.S. Dollar in STEEM. These SBDs can be sold for approximately that $1.00 equivalent on exchanges.
Unfortunately, exchanges currently run these conversions through a token like Bitcoin before they can be converted to native currencies, which adds another layer of crypto-info, learning curves, and complexity. This, however, is not caused by the existence of SBDs – it is a result of STEEM not being accepted as a currency by the exchanges that directly convert to native currencies.
So, while onboarding may be the easy part – via social media – the hard part is price conversion, payment acceptance, and ultimately, “off-boarding.”
Accepting payment is easy to do. The question is, how, as a businessman, do I want to accept payment?
SBDs give me the benefit of pricing any of my goods and services in U.S. Dollars and accepting SBDs as an equivalent payment on a daily basis. There is no immediate need to formulate a new pricing system. Joining the Steemit.com or Busy.org platform as a business is simple. Prices are easily understood. Payments are easily accepted. Conversions into the government’s fiat Dollars – while not necessarily simple – make accounting much easier. Balances remaining in the STEEM ecosystem also make calculation and accounting easy to do.
Don’t underestimate the ease of use and accounting. If widespread appeal, adoption, and use are the goal, then you need an appealing mechanism for those people who will be bootstrapping the economy: Merchants and customers.
SBDs are the appealing mechanism that can drive adoption and use for commerce.
This really is a no-brainer for anyone who makes online purchases – and for practically any business. But the functionality and appeal of SBDs is not limited to just businessmen and to commerce.
SBDs and Investing
One of the appealing features of SBDs are their relative stability and interest payments. This allows an investor to buy into the STEEM ecosystem, see their daily balance in approximate native currency values, and to generate a small monthly profit. It can serve as a means to onboard without directly moving into the more volatile STEEM currency. At the same time, it provides an investment vehicle that can protect gains made from a rising STEEM price without leaving the ecosystem altogether.
If the only options were to either buy or sell STEEM or to power up STEEM, then onboarding those who are not interested in blogging/curating or those who have less of an appetite for crypto volatility will likely not happen. Investors look for ROI, not excessive risk. There is less risk involved if U.S. Dollar-pegged SBDs are available and can be quickly and easily acquired. The ability to collect interest on these SBDs is a plus.
SBDs and Blogging
When people finally decide to join Steemit.com and become new users, they have already decided to join the crypto community, whether it was their explicit desire or not. Maybe they just liked the sleek design of the website or the thriving community. Whatever the reason, they’re in and they now have some learning to do if they want to capitalize on their time and effort.
The easiest thing for a new user to understand is the SBD. What is SBD? It’s a U.S. Dollar equivalent. You can trade that one SBD for approximately $1.00. Sell it for $1.00 of STEEM tokens. Transfer it to another user for a $1.00 cup of coffee. Send it to an exchange for $1.00 of Bitcoin. It’s simple.
All of this talk about how it’s confusing and unnecessary seems quite a bit absurd to me, really. It’s one of the simplest things to understand both conceptually and visually. There is even a Dollar sign in our account wallets in front of the number so that there is no confusion.
So, when blogging on the platform, SBDs and Dollar estimates are fairly consistent and mostly interchangeable. Did you just earn $40 from your post? Great! Now you have approximately $40 in your account. (It may be split between three different tokens, but that’s a payout issue, not an SBD issue.) If you want your earnings from that post to be held in SBD and collect interest, then you can sell the STEEM portion and buy SBDs with it. You’ll then know that your earnings have been “locked in” – assuming that the peg is stable, of course.
What happens if we keep changing everything?
This is a real problem and now I’m going to get into my more critical mode.
When I first learned about STEEM/Steemit, I thought it was a surprisingly innovative idea for both social media and cryptocurrencies. At first, I didn’t quite understand the three token system – but it was the STEEM and STEEM Power tokens that I didn’t quite understand because of their functionality and relationship. The easiest part to comprehend was SBDs.
If you’re having trouble understanding what a STEEM Backed Dollar is and/or don’t know what a U.S. Dollar is, then that’s not a problem with SBDs and it shouldn’t be a reason for eliminating them.
What bothers me is the constant tinkering from the founders of STEEM/Steemit. Believe it or not, I think the concept was brilliant – the SBD-Dollar peg is part of that brilliance, whether you believe it should be U.S. Dollars or not. As stated above, having a peg is a critical component for onboarding and widespread adoption of the currency. Why eliminating such an instrument is even being considered – let alone publicly questioned – is baffling to me, especially when we can see that the peg is actually working.
Yes, having SBDs does come with risk and it does incur a debt for STEEM. But is this risk too high? Is the debt load a real concern, given that a large portion of SBDs are currently being held by 
I can’t help but feel like a lot of the discussions and decisions being made are based on short-term thinking.
Yes, the STEEM price is dropping again. Why? Surely it’s not due to the existence of SBDs.
Prices are falling because the STEEM supply is too high, relative to the demand for it. Just in the past two weeks, the liquid supply has increased by over 4 million. SBDs are not causing that.
Prices are falling because distribution of STEEM has been poor from the start of the project. With that poor distribution comes a host of other problems, such as large sell-offs, skewed influence and post payouts, disenchantment of users, and a consequent disinterest in the platform. SBDs are not causing that.
Prices are falling because investors can’t reasonably predict how the system will be operating next month or next year. They are sitting on the sidelines and watching change after change to many fundamental aspects of the system. At this point, the whitepaper ought to just be scrapped. SBDs – again – are not the issue.
The biggest problem with STEEM/Steemit continues to be the lack of development of the interface, the lack of marketing, and the lack of stability to the economic fundamentals of the system. Every new change to the latter will delay new investment. The time spent on debating these changes is time that can be better spent on figuring out the onboarding and retention issues, which is mostly tied to development of the interface.
If we want the STEEM price to go in the direction we all want it to go, we need STABILITY. We need to see some proven RETURNS ON INVESTMENT (ROI). We need the leaders in the community to start reaching out to or at least accepting help from those WHO ARE OFFERING TO MARKET THE PLATFORM. And we need more time dedicated to DEVELOPMENT – which means less time devoted to fantasies about world currencies and governments crumbling and billions of people fleeing to crytpocurrencies in order to be “saved” from such an apocalyptic event.
Make STEEM/Steemit and other interfaces usable for the average person – but more importantly, make them more easily usable for MERCHANTS AND CUSTOMERS. The success of STEEM as a currency depends on the success of onboarding people who will actually use the currency. Merchants and their customers will use the currency...but they’ll use the currency if it is easily understood and easy to account for during their daily use.
U.S. Dollar-pegged SBDs offer that.
Please stop debating about whether to take away the one good asset that can bring in a large number of people who will actually put the STEEM blockchain to good use.
Perhaps I’m wrong for thinking this way, but I was not a crypto enthusiast when I joined. The only thing that intrigued me was the SBD concept and its peg to U.S. Dollars. I look at this platform from an entrepreneurial perspective. I try to avoid getting caught up in the fanciful concepts of UBI and the dreams of worldwide government collapse. We have to deal with the things that are actually happening right now and what is likely to happen in the near future.
Resolving the onboarding issue and making the platform appealing must be done with the understanding that individuals and businesses exist in today’s world. Not everyone shares the vision of a stateless society. Not everyone shares the enthusiasm of crypto tokens becoming the currency of the future. Making adaptability simple for the greatest number of potential users should be the main focus. And we should also understand that simplicity itself does not mean that the system is necessarily better.
Stop thinking like coders and developers all the time and start thinking like social media users, entrepreneurs, and investors.
Keep the SBDs. Continue developing useful social media interfaces. Make commerce easier. Market the platform(s).
Perhaps Steemit, Inc. needs a business plan, if it doesn’t have one already.
The biggest concern for me right now is pushing out the last of the people who actually believed in this idea. It’s possible that the road map might alleviate some concerns, but I don’t think it’ll be of much use if nobody is here to see it. Continually scaring away existing users and investors with drastic changes to the ecosystem obviously isn’t good.
Can we at least give STEEM/Steemit a chance to breathe before we try changing things again?
As always – comments and criticism are welcomed.
*I didn’t bother to proof-read this, so if there are any errors, if I’m rambling, if things are out of order, or if something makes no sense, just ignore it. Maybe I’ll correct it at some point.
