If your Pending Payout or Past Payout says $0.04, you might not be all that impressed. But looks can be deceiving. Of course it’s shown in U.S. dollars, but you get paid in crypto, so that’s one level of deception. And if you’re taking a 50/50 payout, you’re getting paid in two very different cryptos, so throw in a bit of obfuscation. And, at least for the moment, one of those cryptos is worth significantly more than it’s “supposed” to be worth. And then there’s the time factor. In all likelihood, you won’t be converting the crypto into your local fiat immediately.

Steem and Steem Based Dollars have both been smoking lately. Steem was under one USD as recently as six weeks ago, and was above four USD as recently as earlier today. SBD is “supposed” to be roughly pegged to the USD but hasn’t even been close to it lately. Maybe because of strong South Korean demand. Maybe some other reason. Whatever. But right now, 1 SBD can get you about 12 USD. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth I guess.

But let’s go back to that $0.04 you had displayed. For the sake of example and to make the math simple, let’s say that Steem is at 4 USD and SBD’s are at 12 USD. Let’s also assume that you are getting all of the payout, that curators aren’t getting any of it. For example, you’re a Red Fish with 150 Steem Power who’s upvoted your own post and that, by the time of the seven-days-later payout, nobody else has voted on it, so you get both the author and curator payouts.

As an aside, note that even relatively nominal amounts of SP can now reward posters with a few cents if voting at 100%; this was not the case just a few months ago.

If you you’re taking the 50/50 payout, half of your payout will be in the form of Steem Power, 0.005 SP, currently worth 0.02 USD. The other 50% of your payout will be in Steem Based Dollars. The algorithm (let’s ignore for now that whole three and a half day average mumbo jumbo, shall we?) wants to give you enough in SBD to equal the value of that 0.005 SP, so it gives you 0.02 SBD which is “supposed” to be worth 0.02 USD but is right now worth 0.24 USD.

So what appears at first to be a $0.04 USD payout is really a $0.26 USD payout, six and a half times larger than it appeared to be. If you use the internal market (let’s ignore any negligible transaction costs for the moment) to convert that SBD into Steem, you’ll get 0.06 Steem for it. Power up, duh.

Oh yeah, that time factor I mentioned earlier. About that.

The net result is that you’ve garnered 0.065 Steem Power “worth” that same 26 cents American. But, since you’re smarter than the average ding dong, you’re not cashing out to doomed fiat today, are you?

You can pretty much be sure that a $ or ¥ or € or £ that you cash out now will be worth at most a $ or ¥ or € or £ in one, five or ten years from now. Less if central banks do even more Quantitative Easing (but that’s a post for another day). Do you really think Steem will be worth only $4 a year from now? Two years? Keep going?

From a recent post of mine:

@taskmaster4450 is very bullish about the price of Steem and is projecting $100 Steem by the end of 2018. He’s recently posted a 7-part series (“Convergence”) laying out why he is so pumped about Steem’s future. I’d suggest that you read them all, starting with the first in the series.

@stephenkendal may be even more bullish. In one of his posts (which I have not been able to track down, so this is from memory), he projected $1,400 Steem but I don’t think he mentioned a timeframe. After Steemit supplanted FaceBook or something along those lines.

Are these guys right? Who knows. The timing is particularly hard to try to pin down.

But let’s say you don’t cash out to fiat right away. You have patience. Patience is a good thing for an investor. And that’s what you are, even if you don’t think of yourself as one. You Power Up and wait. That Steem Power helps you in so many ways on Steemit. Your votes are worth more; you can upvote other Steemians and give them some money without even giving up your own. It just sits there. Okay, I lied about that. It doesn’t just sit there, it earns interest.

Maybe not $100 or $1400 right away, but let’s be conservative and say Steem goes to USD $20 at some point. (That is “only” a 400% move from where we are now; how many cryptos can you think of that have done way more than that, more than once?)

Your once-upon-a-time “$0.04” payout that was actually $0.26 is now $1.30, plus whatever interest you may have accrued in the meantime, plus whatever earnings your increased Steem Power has enabled you to accrue. If/when it gets to the @taskmaster4450 projection, it’ll be worth $6.50 plus plus. And if Steem gets to where @stephenkendal projects, stop by for a visit at my vineyard in the south of France.

Those pennies you’re earning now are bigger than you might think.

Disclaimer: This should not be construed as financial advice. I am not a registered financial advisor; I don't even play one on TV. Do your own due diligence. Batteries not included. Objects may be larger than they appear in mirror. Some assembly required. Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.

Pennies image from Pixabay.