Hi Hive account@glenalbrethsen. Just to clarify, in terms of the "debt ceiling," the closest thing to that with SBD is the "10% limit" on the debt ratio. Basically what that does is that no matter how much SBD is printed, it will never be allowed to exceed a debt limit of 10% of the STEEM marketcap. SBD will just become redeemable for less than $1 USD worth of STEEM, instead of taking on additioanl debt. Based on that, the safety of how much debt the Steem blockchain takes on (in the form of SBD) is not changing.

What we have seen under current market conditions is that there is still a high demand for SBD (the price is consistently above $1 USD) even though the debt ratio is above 2%. What is happening under the current rules is we are printing less SBD, even though there is still excess demand. This change addresses that by allowing more SBD to be printed.

Another negative impact under the current rules is that it is printing more STEEM (instead of SBD). This means we are seeing additional (unnecessary) downward pressure on the STEEM price, when we could just be printing more SBD instead of STEEM.

The last thing to point out is that the current system is missing out on the best opportunity to use SBD to it's full advantage. When the STEEM price is at it's lowest is really the best time to print more SBD, because if you assume the price will go back up - then the blockchain ends up getting a 'discount' on how much STEEM needs to be created. For example, if $100,000 USD worth of SBD printed today when the STEEM price is around $1.00, it would only need 1/5 the amount of STEEM if the SBD was not redeemed for STEEM until the price of STEEM goes up to $5.00.

Technically the same mechanism works in reverse. If we print a bunch of SBD when the price of STEEM is at $5, and then the price drops down to $1, we have to print 5x as much STEEM. If we allow the debt ratio to get much closer to 10% though (by allowing printing all the way up to 9%), then it reduces this effect. A significant price drop in STEEM will not result in as much STEEM being printed if the debt ratio was already close to 10%, because it would be capped once it reached the 10% limit described above.