A Closer Look at Today's Steem/SBD Rise (And Groestlcoin, Powering Up, and More)

Did you too wake up to see that SBD and Steem got quite the pump overnight? This was even more the case if you happen to live in Europe.

The Rise is Here?

Here is what I woke up to today:

That's the 24 hours picture. Quite a jump, isn't it? And you can already see we were over the hump at that point.

Just how high did it go?
$3.19 per SBD, or 103% rise over the $1.57 figure we were at 24 hours ago.
$2.45 per Steem, or 58% rise over the $1.55 figure from 24 hours ago.

Time to break out the champagne, right?
Well, maybe not so soon.
Let's look at the cause of the rise first.

I've seen at least one user claim that the pump has to do with the truly exciting Hivemind Update posted on the @steemitblog account, except the times don't fit - that happened 21 hours ago, and the pump about 12 hours ago.

Moreover, let's look closer at the source of the pump, to see whether we suspect it to be a pump and dump, a random pump, or what.

Here is the market-volume image for SBD over the past 24 hours:

And here is the one for Steem:

What do they both share? Upbit.

Enter Upbit:

Upbit has been responsible for 95.15% of the SBD trading volume over the past 24 hours, and for 66.83% of the 24 hour volume for Steem.
You can also notice that on Steem in particular, where other markets still compete, they lag quite behind Upbit in how much they trade Steem for.

So what's Upbit? Upbit is a Korean exchange. Koreans have been known to drive Steem and SBD to new heights in the past. But it's important to note that this is not a global trend, but a localized one, kept that way as the exchange is locked to Koreans, so arbitrage isn't as much of an option here.

Looking at it further, most of the volume seems to be between Korean Wan and the cryptocurrencies in question, so this is money flowing back into cryptos, not money exchanged from Bitcoin. Good, right? Well, it raises the question and risk of an outside entity choosing to manipulate these relatively low-liquidity and low-volume coins (I'll show it further soon).
And, also, if you've been following the South Korean crypto news, each time their government threatens to tighten the regulatory noose, they all run out of the market, and the coins they invested in fall, like Steem and SBD did in recent months, so I wouldn't pull out the party hats just yet.

And Korea, well, let's look at some of what else they've been up to at Upbit over the past day or so (for reference, the SBD and Steem pumps began at 3 AM UTC):

See Groestlcoin? That unassuming coin enjoyed a 159% pump due to Korean involvement yesterday, between 4 and 11 AM UTC. How much of its 24h volume is coming from Upbit? Just 94.98%. Nothing major ;-)

Status? 24.69% pump at midnight UTC, with 80.95% coming from Upbit:

And it keeps looking like that.

Back to Earth:

The way the pumps happen so rapidly, and that they go from one coin to the next (they moved to Steem after they pumped Steem, and to SBD several hours after another coin, etc.) makes me think this is untrustworthy. Especially as it doesn't seem like there's any incentive for the other markets to follow along.

Indeed, we're already back down to $2.50 SBD, which is still a very lovely 57% increase in 24 hours, but still a fair sight lower than the $3.19 high (22% lower, in fact).
Steem? Down to $1.98, which again, is a splendid 27.71% higher than where we were at 24 hours ago, but 19.2% lower than the high of this morning.

If you were looking to sell anyway, and were waiting for a temporary bump, then this is it. Is it possible the markets will keep rising? Sure. But considering Bitcoin and all the large and not-so-easy to manipulate coins are showing about 4-5% increase over 24 hours, I'd expect SBD and Steemit to gradually return to where the other coins are.

Me? I sold my SBD for Litecoin, and expect to make the opposite trade in a day or two.

Powering Up:

If you Power Up right now, by way of selling your SBD for Steem, you'll gain about 1.235-1.239 Steem per SBD. This is about the best ratio we've had since February 16th, and January 24th before that.
If you've been looking for a better ratio to convert SBD to Steem Power, now is the time.

Me? I plan to wait till it looks at over 2 Steem per SBD, at least, but I'm patient like that.

Disclaimer:

I am not an analyst. This is not professional investment advice. Just my observations and thoughts.
But always, look where the money is coming from. Think whether it's indicative of a larger trend, or as the case here, is an outlier that reeks of outside manipulation.

Check out my latest posts:

• Thanksgiving Challenge - Cultural Analysis Bonus Time
• Steemitschool Poetry Class - Recording and Notes- Critique Thursday Class #2 - 29/3/18
• Faith - Poetic prose.

Image sources: First image from pixabay, second from coinlib.io, last from steem.supply, and all the others from coinmarketcap.com

© Guy Shalev 2018.