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a "steem whitepaper" have one. look at "Mitigating Timing Attacks" part
https://steem.io/SteemWhitePaper.pdf

there is citate:
"Steem levels the playing field by requiring all conversion requests to be delayed for one week. This means that neither the traders nor the blockchain has any information advantage regarding the price at the time the conversion is executed".

thank you. My advice is to make some app where you can see the process being worked on. I have transferred 1$ to steem now it just disappeared i am sure it will appear as steem again but still it would be better if i could see somewhere whats going on or at least have some msg that quotes: Your steem dollars are being transfered

dont know exactly how to convert steem dollars -> steem.
I think that is done by market

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