Let's talk about concept. There are different ways of staking in my book. I would like to stress that, I am not your epic investment god father, I am just an ordinary guy who try to learn and survive in the crypto land.

First thing first. Investing can be two different type of investors. One is staking rock hard cash in crypto. Buying the way in to the blockchain either for utility purpose or investment purpose, these investors ultimately wanted their crypto to gain value. The other type, the workers. By investing time and creativity in Steem platforms to earn crypto. Equally, they're the same different kind of investors.

As we all know, currently SBD stays above 1$, and we receive only SBD during payout. The other half goes to SP. What I notice is, people start to HODL their SBD instead. I did ask some of them how do they intend to grow when they HODL their SBD ever so gently? SBD has no application in any DAPPs other than buying vote. Well, I got similar replies from them. Either they don't know when is the best time to change those SBD to Steem? Or they're going to buy votes, but uncertain about the return of investment. So I'm going to talk about these two options.

Buy votes

Do note that, buying vote is different than buying bid. Buying vote is buying for a fixed amount of upvote from vendor for a fixed percentage of return. Whereas buying from bid bot may result in vary situations. If that round being over bid, meaning the amount of SBD sent in exceeded the bot capabilities to vote, then all "investor" share the loss. The pie is only this big, more people rush in, the smaller pie one gets. On a best case scenario, there is a cap to the maximum bid goes out to limit profit to the investor. For example, the cap is 10% profit, the bot can vote a maximum value of 10$. You're the only person who bid on this round for 1$, you won't get the full 100% upvote worth of 10$. The bot will make a calculation according to the algorithm and to upvote you with a maximum return of 1.10$ worth after curation. If you're going to bid for vote, do make sure you find a bot that has a higher cap on profit and lower cap on loss.

By practicing vote buying, you'll be able to gradually increase your payout and profitability. At the same time, 50% of your reward gets automatically converted into SP. The down side is, risky due to overbid and many idiots think they are the only one who jump in the final 10 second with huge bid, in the hope they get extra voting weight from the bot.

Buying votes from vendor like minnowboosters, smartsteem, OCDB seems like the only legit way to gradually increase profitability. As far as I know, you need to be in the whitelist of OCDB in order to utilize their services.

Buy Steem with SBD at internal market

I heard whale said they always convert their SBD to Steem and power up immediately. You know they're right, but sometimes it's hard to decide when is the good time. If you're not sure about it, then anytime is a good time. Power up and upvoting other people meaning you're contributing to the blockchain.

Seriously, that's all? Nope, there are more. Instead of buying it immediately, why not stretch a little bit? SBD currently standing at 0.46 per steem. Why can't we change the price fed to the market as 0.45? I am sure there is always someone who like to buy cheaper SBD back.That way we will be able to change more Steem with same amount of SBD.

This happen when I was talking to a very reputable Steemian in discord. And suddenly…

WTF? Who transferred Steem to me? Nope, there are beautiful accidents, but it never happen to me. Looks like it was my pending order got kicked in at 0.45.

There is no right or wrong time to buy Steem. Anytime is a good time. But don't HODL on the SBD. Park them or convert them immediately. Don't let it sit there in your pocket. It won't grow anything, no mushroom, no dust. It will continue to waste your storage space.