When SBD does its job properly and stays around $1 then I can definitely see the point of it. It would act as a tether so that any earnings could be assured to be kept.
However, when it runs up to $10 or something like that then I just don't see why we keep it around at all. It seems like we could get paid in Steem like we are now and not need something like SBD.
There are several other economic benefits besides just being a stable value token, as explained in the post.
There is very little support for it running up to $10, aside from some speculators who hold a bunch of it and are more interested in getting huge windfall from seeing it pump repeatedly than building the best Steem possible. Everyone else wants to see it work better and say around $1, as you say. The work that @timcliff has done to make improvements (as described in the post) are small steps toward that goal.
The high SBD price lift the floor of Steem and was basically the architect behind the Steem rise, with Steem high supply, you need something to eat away the supply and a way for users who can't get by BTC to buy Steem, its a really a philosophical point of view but we should remember the charts and the sentiment it brought....The argument that it gives Steem holders an advantage with the increase ratio still remains to be seen, it is one that can bring an unexpected shock, BTC won't always go up as we have seen, moments of shock and uncertainty brings the volatility traders in this space loves... Lets see how things works out, if it does not I can point to many reason why it did not but as for now its all speculation...Long-term investors o§er a downward-sloping demand curve to other market participants, whereas speculators trade off the cash flow from holding the asset against the expected capital gains from aggressively exploiting temporary deviations of the price from the long-term value of the asset.
We seem to mix up long-term and short-term sentiment flow with Steem price but as our user base grows and the affluence that comes with it, Steem prices would increase, lets work with a floor rather than speculating and hitting ourselves in the foot by killing enthusiasm and sentiment
That's highly unlikely considering the entire crypto market was on a massive bull run. And when crypto turned down, so did STEEM despite SBD still being very overvalued for months. In fact STEEM underperformed a lot of other cryptos including during the period when SBD was overvalued. In my opinion people believe this largely because of the post hoc fallacy (coupled with looking at STEEM and SBD as being much more of a closed system than they are, instead of small parts of a much wider and bigger cryptocurrency economy). But I would agree with you that it is all speculation, so we can't ever know for sure.
SBD being worth $1+ does help the price of STEEM via the HODLing effect that @timcliff describes, but it doesn't have to be $10 (which then destroys the utility of having a stable token rather than yet another speculative token since people can, and did, lose 90% of their money holding it). Some small premium or even par value is enough.
Steem prices would rise, I am sure on that once our user base increase and affluence that comes with it would help...Retention rate and good sentiment are other factors... The HODLing effect has some merits to it and I would go as far as saying the bidbots certainly play a huge part in the later half....
I remain a critic of Stablecoins so excuse me, I do however see a use for them primarily as a hedge for countries who would like exposure to USD but can't hold them because of political reasons like sanctions, casing point Turkey/ Venezuela but the merchant adoption theory I can't buy into it...
Steem remains the King, it would probably been trading and holding steady 10 dollars if it has the supply of SBD... I watch the trading on varying exchange, it takes triple the BTC volume to move Steem prices but as user growth trend higher things should plateau and then take off but for now we should really think twice about debt ratio but lets see how it goes
Good work by you and Tim, I see you working hard on this, lets hope it goes as plan but speculators would be speculators, they see an opportunity they gonna go for it, we should encourage user who has it in moments like these who wants Steem to make the most of it
I would say we agree more than disagree about use cases. Merchant adoption of cryptocurrencies (whether stable value or not) seems to be mostly a solution looking for a problem but people wanting to hold stable value for a variety of reasons is a demonstrated huge market.
It is fair to be skeptical of stablecoins (in some ways I am as well) but I would say this is more than anything an ongoing experiment. The are big challenges but also big opportunities.