Perhaps Justin Sun will bring about some stability to the way things work around here. One thing that hasn't really worked for most of the life-time of Steem has been the Steem Dollar.
Witnesses: Let's make Steem Dollars worth one dollar. You do not need to fund me
a single Steem Dollar for that. All you need to do is set your price feed to accurately
reflect the USD price of the STEEM token. The market will do the rest.
For you @themarkymark and @yabapmatt, your price feeds are high. Looking at BitTrex the exchange rate is 0.228 USD/STEEM as of 14:57 UTC but your price feed is 0.238 / STEEM. It's a full cent higher than the real price. If you would simply update your price feeds more often I think that should take care of the difference.
What happens when prices are too high? The Steem Dollar has weak backing. How much does a cent difference make? If all Witnesses had that and I convert $1 of Steem Dollars into Steem, I wont get $1 worth of Steem instead I'll get 0.96 USD worth of Steem. This is often where the price goes. I have a high opinion of @aggroed but setting that aside, @aggroed has its price feed 0.268 USD. Which means the Steem Dollar when converted with that price only backed with 0.85 cents worth of Steem.
These witnesses @steempeak, @aggroed, and @drakos have price feeds that are way too high.
How the price feed is supposed to work:
The published price feed should reflect that of real price of Steem in USD. See the white paper. This is so
the Steem dollar can be well backed by a USD worth of Steem. When these
prices are too high the backing just doesn't work. For most of the history of
Steem it hasn't worked.
Please fix your price feeds.
Most of the Witnesses are keeping the correct prices. Please vote up these others
at the expense of the other four if necessary https://steempeak.com/me/witnesses