I'm currently running off endorphins from a 3 mile run annnddd, my first time converting SBD to USD! Hey, look my route looks kinda like a smiling pacman.
Alright, let's get down to the brass tacks. Today, I used the guide posted at the bottom of this post to convert SBD to my countries currency of USD. I did so with extreme trepidation. And, I followed the main STEEMIT faq which advises on your first withdrawal don't try a large amount because if you eff up you could royally screw yourself. I can not emphasize that enough. For it held true for me. I accidentally put 2 SBD up for bid rather than straight conversion to BTC. Then I tried again with 1 SBD (which isn't enough to actually exchange for BTC, I quickly learned). However, it was in the right place and that's all that mattered. So I went on ahead with the larger amount. The conversion to BTC was quick and painless.
I then proceeded to put said btc into my Kraken account for the final process to convert to USD. That was probably most nerve-wracking part to me for it took nearly 45 minutes to get to krakken.
From there selling the BTC for USD wasn't difficult. A few points of interest:
- I don't advise poloneix...it has always been a pain to navigate in the first place. And as of a few hours ago STEEM and SBD transactions were "temporarily disabled"
- Bittrex is what I used instead and it is a lot more user friendly in my opinion
- Today i received notification that my tier 2 verification was confirmed on krakken. Turns out you gotta have tier three to withdraw to bank account in the US. I didn't know that.
"In order to deposit fiat in the US, Canada, Germany, Japan, and other countries depending on what currency you intend to deposit, Tier 3 verification is required"
Tier 2 does allow withdrawal but not for me. So I await tier 3 verification at this point.
https://steemit.com/tutorial/@beanz/how-to-get-my-usdteemit-money-into-my-bank-account
The above is the guide by 
I thought I'd post this as perhaps some inspiration to my fellow beginner steemians that YES this is REAL! When I saw that sweet USD conversion on krakken i was so elated. Now to patiently await tier three.
I have hope that i can pay off my credit card debt incurred in college quickly now. And then just let my STEEM sit and simmer. Hurray!
Photo 1&3: Google images
Photo 2: my image