RE: To SBD or not to SBD – Why is That a Question?
Before doing away with something in a system we should ask ourselves:
Why was SBD created in the first place? Why are the reasons for its existence any different today than they were when it was first implemented? Why are we even having this discussion at all? What benefits would removing SBD have and to whom?
I agree with @ats-david and @pfunk in keeping it. It's easier to explain to noobs and merchants with SBD pegged to the USD than it is to explain Steem. That IS simplicity.
Ask a business owner considering pricing items in Steem or SBD about simplicity and I'd bet they would find it more simple to price items and do accounting in SBD.
ADDED THIS EDIT: The more I think about it, it doesn't really matter from a merchant perspective. They could continue pricing items as they normally do and POS apps like BlockPay can do the conversion for them at the current Steem price when the purchase was made. They got their price and the bookkeeping wouldn't have to change at all.
Removing SBD would give an author earning Steem two choices.
- Power up
- Sell Steem into BTC and if they still wanted stability, sell it from BTC to their fiat currency.
Yes. They can price the equivalent in fiat currencies pretty easily and even have a running dollar conversion amount printed next to balances if that would help. I agree that a price stable currency is easier to explain to people, but where we are going with this thing, I hope we will get to a point where it's just "click, click, click" and the casual users simply won't know/care that crypto runs the back end.
When I look at the big picture I think you may be right. One thing I don't hear anyone talking about on any of today's posts on the subject is how posts would be paid if we made the change.
Next to a post today, the earnings are expressed in SBD and we know this is pegged to the dollar. If the change was made, would the posts earning now be expressed in Steem? And if so, pegged to what? Dollars or today's Steem price?
I assume that's correct. Most of the time, you get some Steem from posting now anyway, so it would just be more Steem if SBD went away.