A random semi-related picture, 'cause you gotta have a picture, right?
Pretty much all of my posts are highly technical in nature and are probably only interesting to read for a select few people on the platform. While I think it's important to write about the technical aspects of my projects, I also really want to write some posts that appeal to a wider audience (hopefully).
It's incredibly time consuming to write technical posts but it also helps me improve my work. If something is too hard for me to explain then it probably means I've built it poorly. Often when writing technical posts I end up finding problems with what I've done, or realizing there's a better way to do things, and then I stop writing and go back to coding. Then when that's done I have to go back and re-write the post.
As a result, I have a few additional technical posts that have been in progress for quite some time. One that I'm particularly excited for is how the decentralized match-making system will work for Steem Monsters battles, but I digress...
Anyway, tonight I'm tired, and I can't concentrate on coding or writing posts about coding, so I'm sort of doing my first "free write" with whatever comes to mind.
Prices
So what comes to my mind? Steem, of course. More specifically, of late, the price of STEEM. It is either an extremely good time to buy STEEM or an extremely bad time to buy STEEM. I don't know which it is, I'm sorry to say.
So for the moment, I will just HODL what I have and earn what I can. I'm really trying to resist putting in any more USD because I've already put in so much (relative to my overall assets), but with so many exciting things on the horizon I may not be able to hold out much longer.
I did buy a decent chunk of SBD recently. I would never buy SBD when it's significantly over $1, but when it's at or very close to $1 I think it presents a great short-term opportunity.
It's a really weird situation where it's very unlikely to go much below $1 due to the instant arbitrage opportunity via being able to convert it to $1 worth of STEEM, but it is likely to go over $1 if the market goes up.
It really shouldn't go up over $1, but since there's still such a small supply and there's a history of huge pumps to well over $10, people will probably buy it up over $1 again if the market turns bullish.
As a result, it presents an extremely unique opportunity to reap the benefits of a bull run without being exposed to the risk of a continued bear market. As long as the price of STEEM doesn't drop down to around $0.50, at which point you will no longer be able to convert 1 SBD to $1 worth of STEEM, of course.
HF20
I should probably also talk about HF20, since that's a hot topic lately. There have been so many other great posts about it though, so I don't think it makes sense for me to re-iterate what has already been said. Also that's more of a serious, heavily researched post topic and as mentioned above I'm not in the mindset for that type of thing tonight.
If you're interested in my thoughts on any specific aspects of the HF, or the whole thing in general, feel free to message me on Discord and I'll be happy to discuss it with you.
What I will say, is that I think the best thing about HF20 is simply that it finally seems to be happening. No platform or technology is perfect, but the best ones are often the ones that can iterate and adapt quickly. One of the biggest knocks against the Steem platform is the lack of any core blockchain updates in what is, in crypto terms, an extremely long time.
Assuming all goes smoothly, we should have a pretty significant core blockchain update in a little over a month, and I think that in itself will provide a big boost of confidence. At least it will for me! I've been here for a year now and everything is pretty much the same as when I made my first post (even the price!).
One other thing that's really important is that this HF is planned to include two contributions from someone outside of SteemIt, Inc. You can read more about the details in @steemitblog's recent post here, but contributing to the core blockchain development is a daunting task, to say the least, so @timcliff deserves some serious credit and support for the work he's done on that.
If you're interested to know what goes into submitting a hard fork change he made a great post about it here: https://steemit.com/steem/@timcliff/steem-blockchain-development-lessons-learned-001
</ramble>
Anyway, I think I've rambled long enough here. If you've made it this far, thank you for reading! I'd love to hear your rambling thoughts about my rambling thoughts in the comments!
Banner art by @nateaguila ...except I just added the Steem Monsters logo in the middle :-)
You had me at “A random semi-related picture, 'cause you gotta have a picture, right?”
So freaking true. Most of the time I write a post I have this same thought. I like to have fun with it though. Like a obscure reference I know most will never get.
Yea would have been good to have more fun with it but I would probably end up spending more time on that than I spent on the whole post!
Hah, I thought the picture was quite relevant, as I think many of us have been staring at candlestick charts lately! In fact, I was looking at a BTC-USD live chart yesterday as the price pumped 300 USD in about a minute. That was exciting, although it wasn't what I was hoping for.
Thank you for finally helping me to understand at least part of why people buy SBD on exchanges. Honestly, I never got it. You can always use STEEM for anything you'd buy with SBD, and the value until recently has always seemed over priced for the stated goal of $1. But since there are mechanisms to automatically bring it back to $1 under most circumstances, and there is that upside potential, right now it does present a decent investment. However, since you can't power it up to use it to further benefit you on the platform, I'm still buying STEEM right now. And I am actively buying STEEM right now. We'll see later if it was a good idea.
Yes, this is absolutely right. I wouldn't call my SBD purchase an investment, it's just a short term trade. Short term trades are not something I often do but I just felt there was a good opportunity here. Overall my money is on STEEM, literally!
@yabapmatt I heard from a fellow steemian that there was talk that, with the hardfork, there will be a change in curation and self-voting? I have heard rumors that there will be more rewards going to curators than previously. If true, that is great for smaller accounts and the ability for minnows to build their steemit accounts. I can't find anything to confirm this. Enlighten me, if you would be so kind.
Yes, this is an important change. Right now, a portion of the curation rewards for votes within the first 30 minutes after a post is published go to the author instead of the curators. In HF20, the 30 minute window will be reduced to 15 minutes, and the portion of the curation rewards that previously went to the author will instead go back to the rewards pool.
It's a bit of a difficult change to conceptualize, and even if you understand it it's hard to predict how exactly things will change after it's released. But the main point is that it removes the incentive and advantage for authors to upvote their own posts immediately after posting.
@yabapmatt I dig it. A good...and necessary change. The idea of putting more towards the reward pool rather than habitual self voters is a good thing. Not sure how it will unfold, but sounds good in theory. Thanks for the response, bud!
This make sense to me as well. It seems like previously less than 25% of the upvotes were going to curation rewards because upvotes within 30 minutes were sending part of their curator rewards to the author.
Hopefully frontends will now become better at showing the amount going to curators and and the amount going to the author.
One question, do curation rewards and the new 15 minute limit work the same when upvoting comments as opposed to posts?
Nice insights regarding the investment / savings opportunity with SBD.
Hmm, would the price then become less than a dollar? Wouldn't you always be able to convert SBD to any other cryptocurrency via an exchange? Are you saying the SBD-STEEM exchange on the blockchain would stop? Or is it currently possible to redeem SBD for STEEM in a way that takes the SBD out of circulation?
The world is asleep and I have a quiet moment to comment. It is nice to see a non-techie post from you. I enjoy reading the tech ones because you share the inner workings of the game and your direction for it, but these rare rambling ones let others relate to Matt, not just the developer/witness. The last ‘freewrite’ writing was probably your ‘perspective’ post months ago.
I noticed as well we are back in the mid 2017 timeframe. I’m trying hard not to add more USD myself (my investment is minute compared to yours) but as you mentioned, there are new projects coming our way. There is only so much discretionary funds I could justify diverting. I refuse to give up my daily DD cup of joe. I don’t think the Steemit world is ready for grumpy bee.
Appreciate you sharing your viewpoints on steem/sbd prices and HF20. OH-awesome interview with steemitblog. Rocking the t-shirt community pride there.
Since I work with HL7 messages and not coding, I will try to be cool by ending with a customized ZFT segment (last segment of reference for messages).
ZFT1|thank you for showing support to my own rambling post|and others|🙂|
Edited: Happy Steemit Anniversary!
@yabapmatt it is interesting you mention sbd. I was wondering if I should convert all my liquid steem to sbd to avoid loss? I just converted 200 sbd to steem last week lol but now i'm wondering if I should take my steem and put back into sbd. I think I have around 800 steem. Interested to know your thoughts on that. I'm also looking to put in 1000 fiat into steem but don't know when to pull the trigger
Right now steem is less than sbd and would be a very bad time to convert. Power it up and make it work for you.
Make it work for you until you post something the troll @themarkymark doesn't like. It's funny that he somehow doesn't mess with steemians like @berniesanders who have large accounts though. He just likes to pick on smaller accounts ...... There is an account posting 10 copy paste posts per day that has HUGE account but somehow these do-gooders missed but pick on @haejin all the time
You mean hundreds of accounts posting plagiarism to abuse the Byteball airdrop? Do you have someone copy-pasting and plagiarizing? Report it and I'll look at it, do something useful for once other than scamming, useless vote giveaway posts, and talking shit.
so @haejin is bad and this guy is good??? @z8teyb289qav9z plz.
@themarkymark you should not down vote him. You self righteous types are not helping the community. You are killing freedom on steem with your actions. The only accounts that should be down voted are for hacking. For the record I never plagiarized the airdrop, that was all original content :))
Also the fact that you think giveaway posts are worthless shows your business acumen.
thanks @themarkymark . I appreciate the advice. I just don't wont to make the wrong move. I don't plan on cashing out for a long long time but I don't want to see my liquid steem dwindle to nothing while I could possible trade in and out for more steem on the way down. I always tend to make the wrong move whenever I start thinking lol. Btw, I like your profile. I happen to know both Mark and Nathan. Interesting that you've combined them both into 1 profile.
Mark was an accident, I just choose random things that come to mind that make it past the "this name is taken" filter. I started posting a lot of Firefly gifs as that is something I enjoy a lot and someone made me a Firefly profile coverage image, so I went with it.
Mark is probably the nicest guy I've ever met in Hollywood for a lot of different reasons. I was really familiar with Firefly til years later. I was surprised to see Nathon's face on the thumbnail when I was cruising Hulu for new shows to watch lol. My sis used to work on Castle so I would hang out there a lot and hit their wrap parties. Castle and Grey's Anatomy had the best parties lol.
One of the guys who worked on the special effects team for Firefly is here.
I always thought this is your real pic...huh...
In my opinion, and totally not financial advice, is that you should HODL the STEEM that you have and buy more if you're bullish on it for the future. If you have some fiat that you want to try for a nice short-term profit on, SBD provides a good opportunity.
I relate to this in so many ways. Every time I'm building anything out of wood for one thing (which can get really frustrating if you don't have enough wood to work with)
I think that's the best plan because who knows what's going to happen, I'm pretty optimistic though. If I had any way to earn FIAT to turn into STEEM I more than likely would end up with about 90% STEEM vs FIAT.
This is going to be interesting, I hope it does some good.
Get some sleep buddy!
Hey Matt. How’s it going? I know you have been busy with your game. Nice to see you take a break to ramble.
The I have mixed feelings about the price drop of STEEM. On one hand my investment of STEEM at $1.30 a month ago seemed like an extremely great buy, but now it is down 27%. It makes me sad. However, if STEEM keep dropping I will make a larger investment because I am here for the long haul. The problem finding the bottom of the price drop.
Thanks for your thoughts about SBD. I never thought about buy it, but I think I will now. Hopefully it will help me hedge my initia STEEM investment.
Are you going to cryptocoincon on August 18th?
SBD isn't really a hedge against STEEM, as a true hedge would move opposite the price of STEEM, but I think it's a good way to take advantage of a potential future increase in STEEM price without being as exposed to the potential downside. I should have mentioned in the post all the usual "don't take this as financial advice" disclaimers!
Don't think I can make it to cryptocoincon, just have too much going on right now. Hope it's a great event though! It's great to see so many events happening in the Philly area.
No worries about the financial advice disclaimer. I'm a big boy and will think things through before pulling the trigger. I'm still undecided if i want to go since no one i know is going. Plus the ticket price is kinda steep at $99.95 for last minute purchase. July pre-sale was only $49.95 which would have been a much better deal.
I quite enjoy hearing a bit of your not-as-techy-as-usual voice. I don’t think you were rambling — not even a little bit.
I’m pretty sure the subjects you covered are generally the same things that are bumbling about in all of our steemy heads. I, for one, just learned some new stuff about that SBD peg.
Thanks for sharing your insights, Yaba! ⭐️
Always glad to hear your thoughts, Matt. I can imagine that it’s pretty nice removing yourself from the coding world, if even for a little bit. Looking forward to seeing more technical (and non-technical) contributions from you soon. Cheers!
Edit: I totally didn't mean to upvote my own comment, lol. I NEVER do that. Anyways, upvote for you on the way :)
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The ability of the blockchain to hold the SBD peg from the downside is a very interesting topic. Whether or not buying SBD now that it's very close to 1 USD in price heavily depends on the debt ratio. I guess what you have to follow is the SBD Debt Ratio. If you go to steemworld.com and see the Steem Info tab you can see that it's 5.295% right now. At 5% SBD completely stops being printed. Bear in mind that SBD is actually a debt instrument that blockchain guarantees can be traded for exactly one STEEM at any time. But how do you figure that the peg would break at a STEEM price of around $0.50? Is this based on how much SBD has already been printed? By what method do you quantify that?
SBD stops being able to be converted for $1 worth of STEEM when the debt ratio hits 10%. I didn't do the exact math but since the debt ratio is around 5% now and the price is around $1 then if the price drops to $0.50 it will be at 10% and the downside peg would start to break.
Thank you for informing me about this!
One more thing I want to add or rather get confirmation with HF20. All votes within the new 15 minute limit of post publication will no longer go to the author but rather go to the curation pool? Is that right? Do u know the reasoning behind this decision?
The portion of the curation rewards that used to go to the author for early votes will now go back to the overall rewards fund for the platform. The reason for this is to remove the financial incentive for authors to upvote their own posts immediately which basically diverts a portion of the curation rewards on the post to themselves.
So another impact of this new rule is that voting bots would make more in curation rewards and can possible increase upvote ROI right?
Love the picture!!!
I bought a sound at @boomerang but I wasn't upvote and the funds were not returned as usual
Thank you for your attention
Steem is going below .50
What arguments do you have supporting your guess?
All rewards from this comment will go to charity
If you really want to know you can read my old posts for the last couple of months.
Well that answers that, thanks! I have to ask, why aren't you powering down your SP and selling it?
It takes so long to get out. I was only able to sell about half of my stake before the price got so low its not worth it for me to sell anymore. I think Ned selling out and scaring everyone is why it dropped so fast and I got stuck.
It is possible for steem(it) to moon-shot if some changes are made but without change steem(it) is dead. BIG competition is coming soon... so the clock is ticking
Switching to SBD now is almost a risk free bet. It has already reached its floor so there's just upside and zero downside.
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Your take on sbd as a semi hedge is simple and really smart. I never thought of that. Thanks.
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@yabapmatt i would like to join witness
@yabapmatt Any thoughts on the 2 way peg subject?
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@yabapmatt - so if I get the SBD idea right , it should work even if convert my STEEM to SBD at this point and later on I convert SBD to Steem?
Question comes from the fact that I can't buy SBD with Fiat , only can buy STEEM...
Tanks for the rambling updates :D I've been reading your tech talks and they've really opened my mind to what's possible on the platform so thanks for the inspiration and creativity! With this kind of thinking, steem games can really make a splash against the counterparty games (that are less updated, though they were really the first suite of tokenized blockchain games) and the ethereum games (that have so little playability for the most part).
I'm excited for the hard fork. I love steem and I've been a part of a project that sees a lot of people bouncing to other platforms that aren't up yet.
Hey man I actually am creating a new account for a upvote bot and was wondering if you still run them for people but I need to try to get some more steem power first.
I don’t really know how to actually make a bot and was just wondering how I could turn the account into one
hey Matt,
Pardon my posting off-topic here, however I've been unable to message you a few times I tried in our previous thread in Discord because it keeps saying we don't share a server (so if you can advise on what server I could join connect to so as to pick up that chat thread, that'd be great too)...
I've encountered a significant issue with Steemit. As there's no centralized technical support to contact regarding it, I'm reaching out to you, given our last chat where you were able to pass on the matter to other witnesses and the appropriate team that may have been able to act on it.
In short, it appears there is no way to scroll back to see posts on my blog that are older than one year.
I just published a post about it here.
If you could pass it on to the appropriate developers, or advise how to report the matter, I'd much appreciate it, as this is kind of a big deal that SteemitInc. really needs to address if there's any hope of being taken as a professional platform catering to the needs of authors publishing here.
Thanks much. 🙏
Hey, that's weird that you can't contact me on discord, i can't seem to find you there either anymore. Try the steem monsters discord server here: https://discord.gg/CAFJRjY
I will see what I can find out regarding the 1+ year old post issue. I agree that you should definitely be able to scroll back to the beginning of the account and see all of the posts no matter how long it has been.