I've already read a few of your posts on it, but I still think it ought to be removed. Demand alone is not reason to keep a product.
Think of the Steem economy as a business. The flight to SBD over Steem will tend to hurt the primary factor (the Steem price) in our economic bottom line, more than it helps. Primarily under certain market conditions that is, but enough of the time that harm will be the sum outcome of its influence.
It is of course perfectly reasonable to expect a lot of this harm to be hidden under price speculation and increased interest in both instruments, but it will still be there.
A lot of people have been asking for price predictions and I obviously can't give that. But I can tell you that if it wasn't for the risk of a very drastic counterinflation of the SBD supply or the risk of a sell off expecting it, I'd almost be more tempted to hold SBD than STEEM as things stand right now. Not at all for any sort of stability, but precisely because of the opportunities that the volatility gives to traders. Not for the short term in which it could drop below $1 even, but for the next 1-2 years or so. The upwards drift is very real.
I don't how you got to this point, which seems to be the basis for removing it. It seems clear to me that the SBD surge is bringing in capital and improving the bottom line.
SBD peg breaking above $1 essentially gives free capital for the network to spend on projects, content etc., while the burden of debt remains at $1 per 1 SBD.
Again, it's a comparison to "what could be". The fact that new money enters the system merely obscures the fact.
If this wasn't an issue and newbies didn't benefit from having a stable token, I guess we could just stop calling it a peg and treat it like any regular cryptocurrency.
The broken peg undermines the utility of Steem Dollars as a stable currency. It doesn't necessarily follow that Steem as a whole is undermined by this.
If we were to remove SBD we would remove one of the top transacted cryptocurrencies period from our system, one which does twice as many transactions as Steem. That's clear empirical usage (and thus utility) being eliminated. The currently broken peg is a double edged sword, it has negative and positive consequences. There's no clear positive consequence of eliminating SBD which couldn't be gained with front end changes instead.
The three blockchain-level options available are fix it, remove it or leave it. For you it seems 'leave it' is the worst option, but I haven't seen that it's doing enough harm to justify that, it is certainly doing good in drawing in capital. For me 'remove it' is plainly the worst option, I see no real upside to that and enormous downside.
If the peg can't be made stronger, yes perhaps we should stop calling it a 'stable' token. It wouldn't be a free floating crypto though even in that case, it's just a weakly pegged cryptocurrency with a stronger minimum value. It is a unique value proposition in the market, although failing the social contract.
This, as a first step. Then stop calling it "pegged" and "backed" as well. This only hides the fact that it can fluctuate wildly above one dollar. You can use the word "supported" if you want.
Otherwise we are just tricking new users into thinking they are recieving a currency more or less redeemable for the USD.
But, under particular market conditions and given that we are trying to make the SBD head lower by exerting effort, then making it not head lower in order to stay up closer to the dollar, the unsucessful peg must harm STEEM as such, as it must be attributed a cost to keep doing this.
As soon as the SBD pumps, which is very easy to have happen, all attention is also put on SBD, making it go even further.
I doubt that many of the people that trade SBD on exchanges a lot will come here as a result of discovering the SBD. All it does is confuse non-Steemians as to which currency is the main token and confuse new Steemians as to all of the different assets here.
Either way, I think we agree that we need to stop tricking users into thinking that SBD is anywhere close to a stable currency, by not providing clear enough terms and/or other information.
Not necessarily true. It is likely the case at present that the cost is borne by speculators and not the Steem network.
That's why I added the qualifier of this being an "acute" issue so to speak under certain market conditions. Overall, I think it will lead to less investment in and use of the Steem currency than if the focus of the community and speculators had been solely on it. It's simply an economic outflow I see. That doesn't mean that any particular user will think Steem or Steem use is too low.
But again, let's at least clarify through the user interfaces or similarly that it isn't a stable currency. We shouldn't expose risk averse users to high volatility without them even knowing it.