RE: To SBD or not to SBD – Why is That a Question?
In reply to your other comment (at nesting level 6)
Why was it in the whitepaper to begin with? What has changed since then that has this discussion taking place at all? Who benefits from removing SBD? I don't see any reason to remove it, only benefits of keeping it. Enlighten me.
The primary purpose of SBD is to provide a stable currency. Merchants who want to use the currency to sell goods want to have something that has a relatively fixed value. If the value were constantly going up and down, then selling things would be really difficult.
Example:
What do you charge for a shirt that cost $15 to make, when one day 100 of the currency is worth $20, and a few days later it is worth $15?
It is also easy for non-crypto users to understand. Getting paid $10 SBD basically means they have $10 worth of currency that they can cash out / use. If that $10 was worth $5 a few days later - it would be bad for the user experience.
As far as what has changed:
- STEEM no longer has the 'crazy' inflation, so protecting against volatility is not as necessary. There is still a lot of volatility though, so IDK if this is really a good argument.
- The system no longer will pay out "approximately $1 USD worth of STEEM" if the debt level exceeds 10%. This means that there is actually a significant risk for merchants who use/hold SBD, in that they may not be able to get all their money if/when they decide to cash out.
- The system starts paying out "part STEEM part SBD" once the debt level reaches 2%, which becomes very confusing for users. It essentially defeats the purpose of having a simple coin that users can understand when you have to explain well, you get some SBD and some STEEM. If you want to, you can convert the STEEM into SBD by using the internal exchange... (This is not a user friendly experience!)
Just a quick note: you write
That's not quite true yet. Because they reduced the power-down period, all of the past inflation is being released onto the market rapidly, resulting in a rather dramatic increase in the effective inflation of liquid Steem. It will be at least 3 months before the effective inflation actually starts to fall. However, 3 months from now is when @ned and @dan are released from their no-power-down commitment, so if they decide to divest, the effective Steem inflation will continue.
Good point.
Your response is extremely helpful to getting my head around these discussions. Thanks.
The more I think about the pricing issues, ie.
This really is a mute point. With POS apps like BlockPay for example, it makes no difference. The merchant charges the same price they charge non-crypto customers. In this example, $15 dollars. The app would take $15 of Steem at the price it is at the time of purchase and the merchant wouldn't even have to think about it or adjust anything in their accounting or books.
I hope you changed your mind.
SBD should be gone. ASAP.
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?