There's also an argument to be made that this is one part of a two prong protective strategy against a particular form of attack. For many years, SBD conversions were basically halted because of artificially high prices on external exchanges. Why convert for $1 if you can sell for $5? As a result, the SBD supply grew far higher than it would have grown, naturally.

We saw in the beginning of the year that when this is allowed to happen, high volumes of simultaneous SBD conversions can be used to flood the blockchain with inflation (unlike burning SBDs, SBD conversions serve to increase inflation, and ~5 million were converted in very short order). I have no reason to think it was done maliciously, but that could be different in the future.

The lesson we should learn from the inflation tsunami in the spring is that excessive SBD supply can threaten the blockchain in multiple ways. It's not just the raw amount of debt.

Longer term: In addition to controlled burns in the SPS, in the future, we may also want to seek ways to restore the peg from the top-side if/when the price goes above $1. We have not done that effectively in the past, and the end-results weren't pretty.