What are your thoughts about the comments from some users that say SBDs are contributing to the current downward spiral we find ourselves in with regards to the price of steem?
Their main argument being that SBDs have created a safe haven for people that fear the price of steem going down. So, they stay in SBDs waiting for the price to go lower, only it keeps going lower because they are always waiting instead of converting. Sort of a self fulfilling prophecy type of thing. And, that it has created a disincentive to buy steem. Are they incorrect?
It is nonsense. There are plenty of other safe (or at least safer) havens for people to flee to if they believe STEEM is going to decline in value. The existance of one additional safe haven has at best marginal effect, and probably not even that. Especially considering that a huge, huge, huge factor in the price declining is lack of investors coming to buy in. Those investors already have their capital elsewhere. Do people really believe that the tiny quantity of 1.2 million SBD (a large part of which, by the way, is held by Steemit itself) is the key missing pool of capital that if suddenly unleashed would send STEEM to the moon?
Keep in mind that this is real value of about $1.2 million dollars! The current marketcap of $30 million dollars (and every cryptos marketcap) are not! In my understanding it is not so tiny as it seems to be.
Also, keep in mind that the current market cap of $30M isnt the market cap thats actually on the market.
there is about 25M "liquid" steem, which amounts to like $3.2M.
That is to say, that 1.2m SBD market cap would be sufficient to buy more than 33% of all extant free steem.
But although SBD could take away capital in theory, two factors suggest that it is not doing so in a significant manner in reality:
SBD typically trades at a far lower volume than steem (for example right now SBD 24 hour volume is under $7k. Steem 24 hour volume is $104K)
Steem and SBD seem to vary in synch, not in opposition. The fastest losses in market price for steem coincide with the lowest SBD values. The infrequent periods of increasing steem market price seem to coincide with high SBD value. If the reality was that the two currencies were competing for scarce capital, we would expect to see the opposite relationship. Feast for steem would mean famine for SBD.
True; people frequently forget that the value of all liquid Steem is actually quite low. The thing is, if I were forced to get rid of my SBD, I wouldn't buy Steem with it. I'd convert it all to USD. There's a reason I've got that value parked in SBD right now.
Insightful point. I still think it is on balance pretty small, and it is too inward-looking to focus on SBD as a reason for insufficient demand. Most significant investment demand will have to come from the outside and SBD has no relevance at all there. Otherwise we are just chasing our tail.
@smooth what do you think about this growth hack for Steemit? I wrote an article about a growth hack for steemit and it is not piickig up steem as I had hoped. Maybe you can support it? That would mean a lot to me. https://steemit.com/steemit/@homosapiens/growth-hacking-for-steemit-how-we-can-reach-millions-with-simple-trick
They store their wealth on the Steem blockchain at least. If we just kill the SBD project, people, who fear the price going down could buy BTC or other crypto with some click, or anything with a little more effort. The far they would go from Steem, the less chance they would come back to invest in it again.
Exactly. The point is to keep people in the STEEM ecosystem, not drive them to other currencies. Sure, they can sell their STEEM for BTC, but then why would they come back to STEEM? You've already given them a better option (or only option, other than holding STEEM) and they'd be more than willing to capitalize on it.