What if it is because of the Tether conspiracy rumor? If Tether is unsafe, perhaps SBD is seen as a viable alternative to Tether?
What if you wanted to cash out your Bitcoin profits, BUT don't want to cash out into fiat because of taxes, and you don't trust Tether (or know something we don't). It may be worth it to pay 2x premium if you know you'd lose more otherwise?
Does Bitshares have a USD tethered currency too? How is that doing? Higher than $1?
The Tether thing can definitely play a role in this one, but I'm not sure of the magnitude. The profits made by that "unauthorized" Tether withdrawal or mint or whatever you want to call it, are well into dozens, if not hundreds of millions. We're seeing a meager $1 million per day here.
No, I'm not talking about laundering the stolen money. I'm talking about if you knew that Tether was a scam and about to fall, and you needed a stable-coin to put your money in that is not Tether, then SBD is one of the only/few other options.
Maybe the demand for a trustworthy stable-coin is so high that the coin in fact breaks out of it's stable price?
Oh, got it now. That may be a possibility. There are few other pegged coins in the Bitshares ecosystem as well. I didn't look at them, but BTS grew 2.5 times in the last 3 weeks.