Steem Dollars price rise – but unable to sell at that price! And what's going on with Blocktrades?

The value of Steem dollars rose considerably overnight – but selling at anything like that value was impossible!

Am I getting something wrong here? Has there been some sort of technical fault? Or are Steem Dollars much less liquid than they might appear?

I'm a bit of a HODLer, but now and again I like to sell some of my hard-earned Steem Dollars (SBD), and having invested some Sterling in SBD a few weeks ago when the SBD price was low, I decided to sell some of it once the SBD price started to rise.

Steem dollars price surge

So this morning I was delighted to see a big surge in the SBD price. But a shock was in store. Firstly, I was unable to access Blocktrades on my browser.

I had to use my more up-to-date tablet computer to access Blocktrades – and once there, I was surprised to see that I was being offered fewer LTC for my SBD than weeks earlier, when the SBD price was much lower!

The top image is a screengrab from Coinmarketcap showing 1 LTC worth around 36 SBD this morning, with the image below showing the Blocktrades exchange price at the same time: it has 1 LTC worth 72.735 SBD!
Apologies for the shocking quality of the lower image – it was taken from my tablet computer, and I haven't yet worked out how to do a screen grab on it.

I initially wondered if my calculations were wrong. I accessed Coinmarketcap's calculator and compared the SBD price with Litecoin, Bitcoin and Ether. Nope – it seemed clear that Blocktrades was just offering a pretty raw deal – which is unusual. I've used Blocktrades several times, and usually I'm happy with the exchange rate.

I understand that they have to take a commission, but 50%? I wondered if something had gone wrong with their software.

Has Blocktrades been hacked?

Or – more worryingly – has Blocktrades been hacked? When I accessed them on my tablet computer from my Steemit wallet, I got through to an "unregistered" address, and I was invited to sign in using my password.

Hopefully that's just a computer glitch, but I'm not taking any chances!

I went onto Discord and noted that @sirjaxxy had also made a comment about the exchange price on Blocktrades. But no one had answered, presumably because it was still the middle of the night in much of the world.

On Discord, @gray00 suggested that I exchange some SBD for STEEM and then trade out on Binance, which sounded like a great idea, especially as the STEEM price was considerably lower than the SBD price.

Coinmarketcap's calculator gave a price of 0.711 SBD for 1 STEEM.

The price of STEEM according to Coinmarketcap was just $2.41 this morning, when Steem Dollars were being valued at $3.16.

However when I tried to trade 10 SBD on Steemit's internal market, the price being offered was in the region of 1.36 SBD for 1 STEEM. I offered my 10 SBD for 0.711 – but there were no takers.

I wondered if the problem was with Coinmarketcap. I looked up other exchanges. Digitalcoin had SBD at $3.12 and STEEM at $2.41.

Worldcoinindex had SBD at $3.15.

But the trade price offered by Blocktrades and the steemit internal market stubbornly stayed much lower.

The SBD market price is falling now, so it looks like I've lost my opportunity to trade in my investment once again. The broader question is: how liquid are STEEM and Steem Dollars if there are only a couple of ways to sell them? No matter how high the value of STEEM and Steem dollars climbs, if their sale is controlled by just one or two outlets, their value is potentially much lower.

Or am I missing something?

Are there alternative ways to trade STEEM and SBD?

I now have to rush off, as an electrician is about to call at the flat I rent out. Meanwhile, I just hope this is something I don't fully understand, and not some dire problem in the Steemit network!

Any comments/help would be gratefully received, and I'll answer them when I get back!