Stablecoins

First, let's understand what a stablecoin is. Stablecoins are a new class of cryptocurrencies that attempts to offer price stability. They are also backed by reserve assets. Supposedly, they're cryptocurrencies without the volatility.

There are lots of stablecoins listed in the market. The Top 10 are the following (by market cap): Tether, USD Coin, Binance USD, Dai, Paxos Standard, HUSD, AMpleforth, TrueUSD, sUSD, and PAX Gold.

However, today we're going to discuss a stablecoin that's native to the Steemit platform. It's of the 3 cryptocurrencies in here. It's called Steem Dollars or SBD.

_{Steem symbol graphics free for use. Source: Steemit}

Steem Dollars

If we look at the FAQs in Steemit, here's how described Steem Dollars:

Steem Dollars (commonly abbreviated SBD) are liquid stable-value currency tokens designed to be pegged to $1 USD. Steem Dollars can be traded with STEEM, and transferred to other accounts for commerce or exchange. Steem Dollars may also be converted into STEEM via a process that takes 3.5 days. (info may be up to date)

Same with Steem, SBD is running on the same blockchain design. It is decentralized and uses the proof of delegated stake model. Unlike BTC or ETH, SBD isn't mined. The blockchain it runs on is called Graphene which can do transactions at around 3 secs, which is faster than most blockchains.

It is designed to be pegged to 1 USD, however, the market value of Steem Dollar is heavily dictated by the supply and demand of the token. So it's possible for 1 SBD to be worth more or less than 1 USD.

Current Valuation

As of the moment, if we head over to market websites like CoinGecko, we will see that the price of Steem Dollars is way more than a dollar:

_{Current Steem Dollars/SBD price supply. Source: CoinGecko}

This is due to the higher demand for it. The supply of Steem Dollars is very limited as of the moment. Though new ones are minted every time from the reward pool to distributed to users for their post's payouts, it's at a very slow rate.

_{Current known SBD supply. Source: CoinGecko}

Getting Steem Dollars

As far as I know, there are 2 main ways you can get Steem Dollars or SBD. Before there were 3 methods, which includes the direct conversion inside the account wallet, which would take 3.5 days to complete - but upon checking that, it's already missing from the options in the wallet.

The first way to get SBD is to trade for it - either in the built-in Steemit currency market or in an exchange.

Simply visit the internal Market, found in the main menu of steemitwallet. There, you can exchange your SBD for STEEM and vice versa with the current market prices (inside the internal market - usually it's at par with outside exchanges too).

_{Trading between Steem and SBD using the built-in marketplace. Source: Steemitwallet}

For outside exchanges, I usually use Bittrex - because the other exchanges are not accessible where I'm at (they require bank account validation which I'm limited to). This is what the trading pair for BTC and SBD looks like in Bittrex:

_{Trading Steem Dollars/SBD in an exchange: Bittrex BTC/SBD pair. Source: Bittrex}

Here is the complete list of exchanges that has an SBD pair listed on them:

_{Current known SBD markets. Source: CoinGecko}

Second, you can receive it as a reward when you make posts or comments.

Now, this will depend on the reward settings that you choose. As of the moment, there are 3 options you can choose from: Decline Payout, 50% SBD / 50% SP, and Power Up 100%. If you choose decline payout, obviously you will not get any SBD or anything at all. If you choose Power Up 100%, you will only get SP or Steem Power, which is essentially locked up Steem. The only option you should choose if you want to receive SBD is the 50% SBD / 50% SP option.

Choosing the 50% SBD / 50% SP option would mean that whatever you get as author rewards, half will be paid out in SBD and half in SP. Here is an example of it:

_{Sample post with expected payout, partially in SBD. Source: Steemit}

The current post value is $16.59 STU (STU means the $ value shown on the interface). If you look at the breakdown of it 7.86 SBD is paid out with 16.72 SP and 16.54 TRX.

As I've mentioned, this will base on author rewards. If you would like a more accurate estimation, you should head over to steemworld. This is what it looks like there (under Coming rewards section):

_{Coming rewards section post breakdown from steemworld. Source: Steemworld}

Steemworld provides a more accurate estimated breakdown on that section since it already estimates how much the curators and authors will get separately.

Transacting with SBD

Transacting with Steem Dollars is very simple. You can simply head over to your steemitwallet page and click Transfer on the dropdown menu next to SBD:

_{How to transfer SBD in steemitwallet. Source: Steemitwallet}

My balance is currently zero, sorry. After you click on transfer, you will be presented with a pop-up window on the same page that will ask for some information.

_{How to transfer SBD in steemitwallet. Source: Steemitwallet}

Simply fill up the information: "To" is the username that will receive the SBD (usernames are the addresses in Steem blockchain), "Amount" is the exact amount you want to send (up to 3 decimal places), and "Memo" can be either the message or the required Memo (for exchanges).

Thanks a lot for reading!

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_{Images with no source were made by me. Thanks @yohan2on, @steemitblog, @steemcurator01, @steemcurator02.}