I'm sure that someone else has already started this discussion, but I thought I'd voice my opinions on this. I'm not a top 19 witness, but my voice can still be heard.
Right now, SBD is trading at $1.5 - today it has fluctuated between $1.3 and $2, possibly thanks to the BTC flash crash from $2600 to $2200.
Why is this a problem?
- Steemit believes SBD is a price stable asset. When your post says you're earning $100, it actually means you're earning 100 SBD. This is quite confusing when you find out you're getting 150 USD. It's at least a lot better than it saying $100 and you get $50 USD.
- One benefit of SBD over other altcoins, was the price stability. I found it extremely convenient to bill my customers in SBD, as it was usually 1:1 to USD. Sadly it's not now, and I have to use Steem Value every time I bill someone by hand.
- Without the stability, businesses are more likely to use payment gateways, rather than hold SBD, as they fear that they may lose money due to price flux.
What can we do as witnesses?
- (1) Negative biases. A few witnesses have done this, but it doesn't have a strong effect, because it mainly affects the internal 3-day conversion. Nobody will want to use the 3-day conversion if they'd earn LESS than they would selling at Poloniex or Bittrex.
- (2) Agree on a higher SBD price. If we can't stabilize the price back to $1, as witnesses we could agree that SBD is now worth 2 USD, and report a positive bias, to encourage people to convert their SBD for $2 amounts of STEEM. This would help to stabilize the price around $2, which is a nice easy number for calculating prices by hand.
- (3) Wait it out. We're currently in an bubble that just burst, and it may recover back to $1. On the other hand, we currently have just 1.2 MIL SBD (compare that to the US's 19tril) in circulation, and with the current boom, it's possible that the people believe that SBD should be worth more, and that we should push for option 2.
- (4) A feature suggestion by
is to allow STEEM tokens to be converted to SBD (you can only do SBD->STEEM right now). This would require another hard fork, but it could definitely help to create downward pressure on SBD. It may be the most permanent fix.
Please, leave a comment. Even if you're not a witness. Help others understand what YOU think we should do to fix the SBD price.
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