I believe this topic has been covered a number of times, but as I frequently run into users that are still unaware of the logic behind the reward/payout calculation, I thought it wouldn't harm to give you my own explanation.
Post Rewards Options
When you create a new post you have three options for the reward payout:
With the 1st option, all your payout will be in STEEM, automatically powered up as SP. Sounds pretty cool, but please read on, as you could miss out big time.
With the 2nd option, your earnings will be paid out both in SP and in SBD (recently some of the SBD can also show up as earnings in STEEM). Note, I didn't say that it is a 50/50 split as that is not entirely correct. Please read on to find out why.
I'm not covering the 3rd option as I hope that one is pretty straightforward. 😜
Go with "Default 50% / 50%" when SBD is above $1 USD
It is really as simple as that.
As part of the design, SBD was always meant to be worth $1 USD. I guess it was designed like that for simplicity, to be able to convert SBD to STEEM and be sure that 1 SBD would give you an amount of STEEM equal to $1 USD. And that is exactly how SBD is treated internally.
Calculation example
In the whole of February, the STEEM price was around $4 USD. For this example, let's assume the STEEM price is $4 USD. Due to the $1 USD peg for SBD, the system thinks that 4 SBD is equal to 1 STEEM. So in the calculations below, you will divide any SBD value by 4 to get the STEEM value.
Let's say you have a post with a $40(SBD) payout value.
Power Up 100%
With 100% power up you convert all earnings to STEEM.
The payout will be like this:
40 / 4 = 10 STEEM (divide 40 SBD by 4)
Default 50% / 50%
With 50/50, 50% will be payed out in SBD and 50% in STEEM.
For the SBD part you just divide the 40 by 2:
40 / 2 = 20 SBD
For the STEEM part, you take the other half and convert it to STEEM, same as you did above with the 100% power up.
So first you divide 40 by 2:
40 / 2 = 20 SBD
then you convert this to STEEM by dividing it by 4:
20 / 4 = 5 STEEM
Final comparison:
With 100% power up you would end up with: 10 STEEM.
With 50/50 you would end up with: 20 SBD and 5 STEEM.
I think you can quickly see the advantage of using the 50/50 method. But let's convert both into STEEM. In the period of February SBD was always worth more than STEEM, but for simplicity let's say SBD was also worth $4 USD, so 1 SBD equal 1 STEEM.
So with the 50/50 method, you would receive 25 STEEM, compared to the 10 STEEM from the 100% power up. 😀
That's a 150% better payout!!
Of course, these figures don't include the curation rewards. So, 75% would be yours and 25% would go to the curators.
Conclusion
Remember to always use "Default 50% / 50%" whenever the SBD price is above $1 USD. If your goal is to power up your STEEM, then sell your SBD in the market and power it up manually.
