A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, there was much talk about the fact that our SBD currency was supposed to (more or less) be "pegged to the USD."
1.00 SBD = 1.00 USD. Simple enough.
Morning sun on autumn leaves...
Thanks to some "mystery mechanism" that a lot of people (at the top) seemed to know about, but nobiody could really explain, SBD was supposed to settle around 1.00 USD. This, in spite of the fact that it was a currency essentially traded on the open market, and hence at the mercy of external market forces.
I probably read about 2-3 dozen posts by witnesses and other early adopters, and ended up just shrugging, at the end of it all.
Then — when aforesaid "external market forces" suddenly pushed SBD up past 10.00 USD for a while, the chatter seemed to change to "the peg is broken", mixed with a surprising number of assurances that "it's still working."
More recently, we watched SBD drop all the way down in the neighborhood of 0.50 USD. At that point, not much being said about "mechanisms" and "broken pegs," or anything else for that matter.
Head in the sands of reality?
Fast Forward to Now...
Then we "fast forward" to this morning where I noticed that the SBD has now clawed its way back to 0.80 vs the USD.
Does that mean that "it is working?"
Or is it more a case of the old truism "even a broken clock is right, twice a day?"
Now, you might be wondering why I care.
In my particular case, because of commerce. Or at least the potential for commerce. You see, if I set aside my blockchain-cryptocurrency-investor hat for a moment and instead put on my street level merchant hat instead... the entire idea of cryptocurrencies is actually very UN-attractive because of these wild pricing fluctuations.
I can't base a business around putting a t-shirt out for sale for the equivalent of $10.00 today, only to watch it be worth half that, two weeks from now... or overpriced at twice that, in the same time frame. Ain't gonna happen, especially as long as we are — in essence — still trading everything vs. fiat currencies.
Is the sun setting on any hopes of stability?
And hence the need — at least from my limited "merchant perspective" — for the SBD to pretty much "behave itself" in a manner you can run a business around.
And forgetting my own issues for a moment... how can we ever hope to pitch the attractiveness of cryptocurrencies to the so-called "normies" as long as everything seems like an eternal rollercoaster ride?
So there's this morning's question: IS the alleged SBD "peg" actually working — albeit slowly — or are we just watching "market forces?" Is the peg even a thing? Last time we were "off the reservation" price wise, top witness 
(As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for Steemit)
Created at 190107 08:42 PDT