Lets examine what are the pros and cons of having a tradeable Steem Power. If you don't know, Steem Power is the long term equity component of the Steem network. It is a form of long term equity, that can't be transferred, but it can be cashed out in 108 weeks, that is 2 years, in a process called "Power Down".

It is not transferrable, but it acts as a multiplier of your voting power, the more you have, the more you earn from curation. It is a very exciting and attractive asset to have in my opinion. Now although it's not transferrable in it's current form, let's examine what would happen if it were transferrable.

PROS

• Massively reducing STEEM devaluation (HUGE +)
• More efficient and liquid monetary system
• STEEM POWER trading instead of Steemit account trading
• Could be used to build financial investment system on, with escrows (HUGE +)
• Properly setup voting pools instead of giving out Private Posting Key
• A STEEM POWER lending system (borrow above SP interest rate, and earn SP interest on it)

CONS

• Reputation evasion

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So these are the PROS and CONS in my opinion, and although we have only 1 con, which is pretty significant, I think the pros massively outweigh the con. Reputation evasion means that a low reputation person would send his SP to a fresh account, and continue his evil activities from there. And yes this is a problem, that perhaps can be solved by setting a trigger for example.

• People with 0 reputation cannot trade away their SP, but everyone else can. So this could fix this issue.

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THE BENEFITS

1. It would reduce the amount of STEEM POWER devaluation through powering down, since instead of powering down, people would trade their SP in OTC markets, off exchange, and the price would be impacted much less. If people would start selling their SP for BTC , that would barely affect the STEEM market, and would lift up a huge burden from it's price.

2. It would make SP more efficient, since the dormant SP in newbie accounts can all be used, and concentrated into bigger accounts through a voting pool that would collect the small SP, merge it together, and use that to vote. Then each user would receive their share from it. Currently if people have too low SP in their account, their vote gets rejected, so it would make sense to merge the SP into "collector accounts", all of this voluntarily of course. If people don't want to participate, it's Ok.

3. Account trading is a problem, people with high SP are already selling their accounts, which then leaves room to scammers buying them up and using their reputation to scam people. This is a problem, not to mention identity theft. It would be easier if people can just trade the SP away from their accounts instead of selling the entire account. It would reduce the scams.

4. It could be used to build more advanced smart contracts, a lending system and an entire financial system into Steem. It would be awesome.

Tell me your opinions in the comment section!

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