Rambling Thoughts on Steem Stuff
A random semi-related picture, 'cause you gotta have a picture, right?
Pretty much all of my posts are highly technical in nature and are probably only interesting to read for a select few people on the platform. While I think it's important to write about the technical aspects of my projects, I also really want to write some posts that appeal to a wider audience (hopefully).
It's incredibly time consuming to write technical posts but it also helps me improve my work. If something is too hard for me to explain then it probably means I've built it poorly. Often when writing technical posts I end up finding problems with what I've done, or realizing there's a better way to do things, and then I stop writing and go back to coding. Then when that's done I have to go back and re-write the post.
As a result, I have a few additional technical posts that have been in progress for quite some time. One that I'm particularly excited for is how the decentralized match-making system will work for Steem Monsters battles, but I digress...
Anyway, tonight I'm tired, and I can't concentrate on coding or writing posts about coding, so I'm sort of doing my first "free write" with whatever comes to mind.
Prices
So what comes to my mind? Steem, of course. More specifically, of late, the price of STEEM. It is either an extremely good time to buy STEEM or an extremely bad time to buy STEEM. I don't know which it is, I'm sorry to say.
So for the moment, I will just HODL what I have and earn what I can. I'm really trying to resist putting in any more USD because I've already put in so much (relative to my overall assets), but with so many exciting things on the horizon I may not be able to hold out much longer.
I did buy a decent chunk of SBD recently. I would never buy SBD when it's significantly over $1, but when it's at or very close to $1 I think it presents a great short-term opportunity.
It's a really weird situation where it's very unlikely to go much below $1 due to the instant arbitrage opportunity via being able to convert it to $1 worth of STEEM, but it is likely to go over $1 if the market goes up.
It really shouldn't go up over $1, but since there's still such a small supply and there's a history of huge pumps to well over $10, people will probably buy it up over $1 again if the market turns bullish.
As a result, it presents an extremely unique opportunity to reap the benefits of a bull run without being exposed to the risk of a continued bear market. As long as the price of STEEM doesn't drop down to around $0.50, at which point you will no longer be able to convert 1 SBD to $1 worth of STEEM, of course.
HF20
I should probably also talk about HF20, since that's a hot topic lately. There have been so many other great posts about it though, so I don't think it makes sense for me to re-iterate what has already been said. Also that's more of a serious, heavily researched post topic and as mentioned above I'm not in the mindset for that type of thing tonight.
If you're interested in my thoughts on any specific aspects of the HF, or the whole thing in general, feel free to message me on Discord and I'll be happy to discuss it with you.
What I will say, is that I think the best thing about HF20 is simply that it finally seems to be happening. No platform or technology is perfect, but the best ones are often the ones that can iterate and adapt quickly. One of the biggest knocks against the Steem platform is the lack of any core blockchain updates in what is, in crypto terms, an extremely long time.
Assuming all goes smoothly, we should have a pretty significant core blockchain update in a little over a month, and I think that in itself will provide a big boost of confidence. At least it will for me! I've been here for a year now and everything is pretty much the same as when I made my first post (even the price!).
One other thing that's really important is that this HF is planned to include two contributions from someone outside of SteemIt, Inc. You can read more about the details in @steemitblog's recent post here, but contributing to the core blockchain development is a daunting task, to say the least, so @timcliff deserves some serious credit and support for the work he's done on that.
If you're interested to know what goes into submitting a hard fork change he made a great post about it here: https://steemit.com/steem/@timcliff/steem-blockchain-development-lessons-learned-001
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Anyway, I think I've rambled long enough here. If you've made it this far, thank you for reading! I'd love to hear your rambling thoughts about my rambling thoughts in the comments!
Banner art by @nateaguila ...except I just added the Steem Monsters logo in the middle :-)
Thank you for finally helping me to understand at least part of why people buy SBD on exchanges. Honestly, I never got it. You can always use STEEM for anything you'd buy with SBD, and the value until recently has always seemed over priced for the stated goal of $1. But since there are mechanisms to automatically bring it back to $1 under most circumstances, and there is that upside potential, right now it does present a decent investment. However, since you can't power it up to use it to further benefit you on the platform, I'm still buying STEEM right now. And I am actively buying STEEM right now. We'll see later if it was a good idea.
Yes, this is absolutely right. I wouldn't call my SBD purchase an investment, it's just a short term trade. Short term trades are not something I often do but I just felt there was a good opportunity here. Overall my money is on STEEM, literally!
@yabapmatt I heard from a fellow steemian that there was talk that, with the hardfork, there will be a change in curation and self-voting? I have heard rumors that there will be more rewards going to curators than previously. If true, that is great for smaller accounts and the ability for minnows to build their steemit accounts. I can't find anything to confirm this. Enlighten me, if you would be so kind.
Yes, this is an important change. Right now, a portion of the curation rewards for votes within the first 30 minutes after a post is published go to the author instead of the curators. In HF20, the 30 minute window will be reduced to 15 minutes, and the portion of the curation rewards that previously went to the author will instead go back to the rewards pool.
It's a bit of a difficult change to conceptualize, and even if you understand it it's hard to predict how exactly things will change after it's released. But the main point is that it removes the incentive and advantage for authors to upvote their own posts immediately after posting.
@yabapmatt I dig it. A good...and necessary change. The idea of putting more towards the reward pool rather than habitual self voters is a good thing. Not sure how it will unfold, but sounds good in theory. Thanks for the response, bud!
This make sense to me as well. It seems like previously less than 25% of the upvotes were going to curation rewards because upvotes within 30 minutes were sending part of their curator rewards to the author.
Hopefully frontends will now become better at showing the amount going to curators and and the amount going to the author.
One question, do curation rewards and the new 15 minute limit work the same when upvoting comments as opposed to posts?
Nice insights regarding the investment / savings opportunity with SBD.
Hmm, would the price then become less than a dollar? Wouldn't you always be able to convert SBD to any other cryptocurrency via an exchange? Are you saying the SBD-STEEM exchange on the blockchain would stop? Or is it currently possible to redeem SBD for STEEM in a way that takes the SBD out of circulation?
The world is asleep and I have a quiet moment to comment. It is nice to see a non-techie post from you. I enjoy reading the tech ones because you share the inner workings of the game and your direction for it, but these rare rambling ones let others relate to Matt, not just the developer/witness. The last ‘freewrite’ writing was probably your ‘perspective’ post months ago.
I noticed as well we are back in the mid 2017 timeframe. I’m trying hard not to add more USD myself (my investment is minute compared to yours) but as you mentioned, there are new projects coming our way. There is only so much discretionary funds I could justify diverting. I refuse to give up my daily DD cup of joe. I don’t think the Steemit world is ready for grumpy bee.
Appreciate you sharing your viewpoints on steem/sbd prices and HF20. OH-awesome interview with steemitblog. Rocking the t-shirt community pride there.
Since I work with HL7 messages and not coding, I will try to be cool by ending with a customized ZFT segment (last segment of reference for messages).
ZFT1|thank you for showing support to my own rambling post|and others|🙂|
Edited: Happy Steemit Anniversary!
@yabapmatt it is interesting you mention sbd. I was wondering if I should convert all my liquid steem to sbd to avoid loss? I just converted 200 sbd to steem last week lol but now i'm wondering if I should take my steem and put back into sbd. I think I have around 800 steem. Interested to know your thoughts on that. I'm also looking to put in 1000 fiat into steem but don't know when to pull the trigger
In my opinion, and totally not financial advice, is that you should HODL the STEEM that you have and buy more if you're bullish on it for the future. If you have some fiat that you want to try for a nice short-term profit on, SBD provides a good opportunity.
I relate to this in so many ways. Every time I'm building anything out of wood for one thing (which can get really frustrating if you don't have enough wood to work with)
I think that's the best plan because who knows what's going to happen, I'm pretty optimistic though. If I had any way to earn FIAT to turn into STEEM I more than likely would end up with about 90% STEEM vs FIAT.
This is going to be interesting, I hope it does some good.
Get some sleep buddy!
I quite enjoy hearing a bit of your not-as-techy-as-usual voice. I don’t think you were rambling — not even a little bit.
I’m pretty sure the subjects you covered are generally the same things that are bumbling about in all of our steemy heads. I, for one, just learned some new stuff about that SBD peg.
Thanks for sharing your insights, Yaba! ⭐️
Hey Matt. How’s it going? I know you have been busy with your game. Nice to see you take a break to ramble.
The I have mixed feelings about the price drop of STEEM. On one hand my investment of STEEM at $1.30 a month ago seemed like an extremely great buy, but now it is down 27%. It makes me sad. However, if STEEM keep dropping I will make a larger investment because I am here for the long haul. The problem finding the bottom of the price drop.
Thanks for your thoughts about SBD. I never thought about buy it, but I think I will now. Hopefully it will help me hedge my initia STEEM investment.
Are you going to cryptocoincon on August 18th?
SBD isn't really a hedge against STEEM, as a true hedge would move opposite the price of STEEM, but I think it's a good way to take advantage of a potential future increase in STEEM price without being as exposed to the potential downside. I should have mentioned in the post all the usual "don't take this as financial advice" disclaimers!
Don't think I can make it to cryptocoincon, just have too much going on right now. Hope it's a great event though! It's great to see so many events happening in the Philly area.
No worries about the financial advice disclaimer. I'm a big boy and will think things through before pulling the trigger. I'm still undecided if i want to go since no one i know is going. Plus the ticket price is kinda steep at $99.95 for last minute purchase. July pre-sale was only $49.95 which would have been a much better deal.
Always glad to hear your thoughts, Matt. I can imagine that it’s pretty nice removing yourself from the coding world, if even for a little bit. Looking forward to seeing more technical (and non-technical) contributions from you soon. Cheers!
Edit: I totally didn't mean to upvote my own comment, lol. I NEVER do that. Anyways, upvote for you on the way :)
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The ability of the blockchain to hold the SBD peg from the downside is a very interesting topic. Whether or not buying SBD now that it's very close to 1 USD in price heavily depends on the debt ratio. I guess what you have to follow is the SBD Debt Ratio. If you go to steemworld.com and see the Steem Info tab you can see that it's 5.295% right now. At 5% SBD completely stops being printed. Bear in mind that SBD is actually a debt instrument that blockchain guarantees can be traded for exactly one STEEM at any time. But how do you figure that the peg would break at a STEEM price of around $0.50? Is this based on how much SBD has already been printed? By what method do you quantify that?
SBD stops being able to be converted for $1 worth of STEEM when the debt ratio hits 10%. I didn't do the exact math but since the debt ratio is around 5% now and the price is around $1 then if the price drops to $0.50 it will be at 10% and the downside peg would start to break.
Thank you for informing me about this!