I almost totally agree. It almost seems like someone is on a mission to turn steem into a bitcoin clone. If eliminating SBD doesn't drive the price up, do we start demanding transaction fees and elimination of everything else that distinguishes STEEM from bitcoin?
Steemit, Inc is a portal. It needs to focus on simplicity, attractiveness, usability, and function in the web site. People can choose to use SBD or not. Taking away that capability doesn't seem to do anything for anyone.
My one reservation stems from this and this. STEEM's all time high came within a day of when SBD started trading on a public exchange, and traders have been observed gaming the price differences between exchanges. I'm not a trader or a finance guy, but in the back of my mind I have to wonder if there's some artefact of the way the peg, the conversion process, and the internal and external exchanges interoperate that's creating irresistable downward pressure on the price of STEEM?
Update: Even if there is an exchange-related malfunction as suggested in that second link, the proposed solutions there would be less drastic than wholesale elimination of SBD.
I have done this. It's called arbitrage, it's not "gaming," and it's an absolutely essential part of a well-functioning market. Yes, there have been many times in which the arbitrage serves to push down the price of Steem, but this is part of what people are talking about when they complain about the "cost of the SBD peg." The only way to raise the price of SBD (to $1) is the decrease the price of Steem.
I didn't mean to imply any negative connotation with the word "gaming". I think it does fit, though (in a non-technical sense). The word choice is not an essential part of my point, though. Call it "arbitrage" if you prefer. The main point is that although I know the correlation between the downturn of steem's price and the launch of the external SBD market is probably coincidental, until I see STEEM go on a sustained positive trend, I can't rule out that some sort of dysfunctional feedback loop among the peg, the 7 day conversion, the internal exchange, and the external exchange is a contributing factor in the decline.
If someone is looking for an opportunity for simplification, there it is.