An Attempt to increase SBD Price through Supply Shortage & What Steemit can learn from Facebook
Recently we have seen the price of SBD falling very low. Many jobless people who rely on SBD to pay their bills have to go through hardship with this drop.
SBD, Steem Backed Dollars or Steem Based Dollar, earlier this year on February we saw it around $15, which now is being traded at $1 - $1.10
This is an economic problem which effects all of us, especially the jobless whales & vote sellers whose livelihood depends on this platform.
If you check your wallet, you will see a big portion of your reward comes in Steem Power, then another comes in liquid Steem and a very small portion in SBD. If we roughly do a calculation.. 90% of your reward is being awarded in Steem + Steem Power and 10% in SBD.
And to solve this problem they are now trying a childish way, and that is to reduce the supply of new production of SBD.
Now what do you think of this basic economic policy, do you believe that by artificially lowering the supply can increase the price.
I personally think this is a very simple idea, which you will find in any introduction to economics text book. The reason I believe is you might temporarily reduce the production of new supply, but what about the supply in stock? As soon as price increases by 10 cents, holders of big quantity starts dumping, taking the price lower, which you can see in this daily chart here how the volatility is shaking.
If you ask me if there is another way, I would say look at Facebook or Instagram and learn from them. The users of those platforms do not get paid any reward, yet their userbase continues to growth, ofcourse there have been many campaigns and scandals against those mainstream platforms but how many people actually deleted their accounts. Well I haven't. As a matter of fact, its more fun there. It gives a warm feeling, a sense of belonging and a lively social interaction. Even though we know they are earning money through advertisement being shown to us, or by selling our data to different organisations, yet knowing all these, why have you not permanently disabled your accounts?
Because:
You are not being ranked or categorised into minnows or whales. The admins have made a set of rules and its equal for all. There is no discrimination. The law is same for all, ofcourse people like President Trump will receive special privilege when he makes Tweets, but that's because he is the President.
If you post your photos or stories, people will hit the like button without the need to pay them. There are no like selling bots, is there?
It's the same for all, there are no special treatment if your account was created five years ago or 5 days ago.
And most importantly, there is no dislike button, Facebook recently did add the feature of 😡 angry reaction emoji but that never creates dissatisfaction between people.
The block button is also great. The data we are inputting here is always like public property. Anyone can view all the data being published. Anyone can reply, or write harassing comments, and the mute button is useless, if you mute me, you won't be able to see my updates, but I will be able to see your updates, lol. The block button there is really helpful in ways of keeping creeps, stalkers or disgusting people away from your data, the share with public, or share with friends is another awesome feature. Everything here is public, there is not even any friends button here.
I wouldn't call it a social network, because there is hardly any socialising going on here, its just a bunch of greedy people gathering on a virtual space. And that's why I think reducing supply like this may create a temporary increase in price, but then again if demand is low, then low supply won't increase price.
Afterall Economics is a Social Science. Creating more social activities and elimination of discrimination and causing intentional harm to another out of jealousy or hatred needs to be stopped first.