Buying SBD is one way to speculate on a falling Steem price as a method to acquire a lot after Steem price has dropped because there's no slippage assuming no price biasing by the witness (more Steem just gets created when the SBD is converted). Buying SBD when it's lower than a dollar just makes sense in most cases, assuming you don't expect a complete implosion on Steem prices.
But given how far Steem would have to fall right now to make SBD worth acquiring at it's current value, it just doesn't make sense as a motive for buying SBD I think. The only thing that makes sense I think is someone trying to do a pump-and-dump on SBD because of the low liquidity.
The liquidity is especially low right now because Poloniex gateway is down, leaving most of the SBD available for trading on bittrex. The volume has mostly been on bittrex and that's where the high price is being driven. But the volume levels versus available amount of SBD there is highly suspect:
Bittrex's hot wallet only has 2.4m SBD as of the time of this comment (maybe they have a cold wallet I don't know about): https://steemit.com/@bittrex/transfers
BUT:
Coinmarketcap was reporting volumes as high as $40 million USD equivalent SBD on bittrex over earlier days during the SBD pump. That's a whole lot of churn of a 2.4 million SBD available for trading.
I have noticed that the volume number has been dropping over the past few days, which makes me wonder if the pump isn't about to end.
First, thanks for taking the time to comment here, I really appreciate it (also thank you for the upvote, quite unexpected).
As for witnesses not reacting, I did my best to adjust my bias, but I'm only one out of 100 and not even in top 50.
I am with you 100% on the volume thing. I have been fantasized about the following theory, though, I don't know if it's real, but, at some point, it may make sense.
Let's start with a volume of $40 million equivalent of SBD. Bittrex says all transactions incur a 0.25% fee. So for trading $40 million, one would have to pay $100,000 in fees. That's just for changing hands of SBD for BTC in Bittrex (moving around SBD between STEEM accounts is free, as we know). So $100,000 for moving around $40 million.
If the profit made by pumping SBD twelve times higher is relevant, I think this cost is very small. Proxying capital through an overvalued SBD can lead to profits probably 10x higher than "normal" STEEM buying.
I'm not saying this is what's happening, I'm saying this is plausible.
But whoever did this probably made a lot of money.