SBD Trading At $1.2, Closer To The Peg, Poloniex Still Disabled And Some Ramblings
Please be informed that these are just ramblings and may or may not be true. But I thought they're worth a short note, maybe somebody else could chip in some more information.
For almost two weeks, the deposits and withdrawals on Poloniex (arguably the biggest exchange for Steem/SBD) are disabled. That means you cannot transfer Steem/SBD from and to Poloniex. The result: trading is made only with the supply that is already on Poloniex. No new influx of capital.
It's not a surprise, though, that the price of Steem has been gracefully declined and trading was more or less sideways. But... There is a tiny, little "but": SBD has been trading in a more consistent way downwards. At the moment of writing, SBD is at $1.2, which, if you have any knowledge of the Steem ecosystem, is a rather good news. SBD is supposed to hold the peg to the dollar, in other words, 1 SBD should always be equal 1 USD. In the internal market, this is achieved by the price feed published by witnesses. But in an open exchange, unexpected things may appear, namely supply and demand.
So here are my ramblings.
1 - Somebody (or a group of somebodies, or just some trend formed around Steem, as a currency) tries to pump SBD, without having any idea about the peg. On an open exchange this is relatively easy: move your buy and sell orders until some FOMO is triggered and then watch the price going up.
2 - Because the increasing split between SBD and dollar could have unexpected and undesired consequences for the entire STEEM ecosystem, Steemit INC, (or somebody who has control over the relationship with Poloniex in regard to that), decided to stop the influx of capital, so SBD pump can stop. This assumption is supported by the warning from Poloniex:
It's a very drastic measure and it's already affecting the price of the other, more popular currency, the STEEM itself.
3 - Once SBD reaches the peg (and the people who are trying to pump it get tired or disappointed by their tiny profits from this currency) deposits and withdrawals from Poloniex may be restarted. At that point, expect a consistent surge in price for Steem.
Another interesting side of the story would be related to the supply on the exchanges: if the price will continue to stay low, buyers will step in and, eventually, the Steem supply on Poloniex will be diminished. That will push demand. And when the new influx of Steem will come to Poloniex, the price will go up.
Again, these are just ramblings at this point and may or may not have any link with reality.
I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.
https://steemit.com/~witnesses
If you're new to Steemit, you may find these articles relevant (that's also part of my witness activity to support new members of the platform):
Very interesting and I think that you are correct in your analysis, there is some artificial pressure on the SBD right now.
Yes, and that pressure doesn't benefit the Steem ecosystem.
No, the free market should be just that, free!
If a market gets dominated by a single player who starts to manipulate the price, then the free market is suddenly not that free anymore, isn't it?
Exactly!
I like your analysis @dragosroua greed and speculations are the 2 main principles that lead to such behavior which can affect all in a negetive or some in a positive way. The solution is that we remain strong, keep powering up our steem and keep our eyes wide open-ready to defend steem from greedy speculators.
That's a very good attitude :)
Thanks, lets hope that all will be ok.
Welcome
Thanks @dragosroua for the updates, i expect the SBD to reach to its peg soon, everything normalize from then on and steem price sky rockets...
Maybe it's time to abolish steemdollars? Can witnesses like you put this forward as a proposal. I think just having Steem and SteemPower is enough, am not sure what the original purpose of steemdollars was.
My personal opinion is that SBD, as a pegged asset for a certain amount of the total supply of Steem is useful, so I will not support a proposal to get rid of it. Maybe at some point in the future, when Steem will be more stable, we can think at something like this. Or even changing the peg to something else, like Bitcoin or Ethereum.
My SBD deposit eventually came through on Polo after days of waiting. I was also going to cash out Steem but not happy with the price so i just powered up. I remember some time ago BITUSD was supposed to pegged but always very low supply so it was traded above the USD price. Not sure if thats ever been fixed not used Openledger for a while.
Great post, you make some very good points in it. I think my concern about it is that there could be someone that is manipulating the price of SBD. While that doesn't seem to have an immediately effect, it will probably affect the price of Steem, Steem Power, and SBD for everyone at some point.
There's actually a post about it by msg768 that has some interesting assumptions. https://steemit.com/steemit/@msg768/has-poloniex-been-manipulating-the-price-of-steem-sbd
It's obvious that somebody is "playing" with SBD. Either by ignorance or with the intent of destabilizing the internal workings of the Steemit ecosystem, that we don't know.
thanks for the link, will look at it.
I hope it will grow!
What is very different at Steem is that you can influence its growth, not only hope speculation will make it grow. The more interesting the whole ecosystem becomes, the higher the price.
Then it will grow 100% :D
Very good. I am here to learn. Upvoted and followed
I wrote on this topic yesterday, probably from a less informed position than you - as the value of my held SBDs has dropped massively in the last few days - wiping out some of my plans in the process. I'd appreciate your comment on my blog here: https://steemit.com/steem/@ura-soul/strategies-for-maximising-the-value-of-posts-on-steemit-are-sbds-a-reliable-form-of-wealth-storage
I think better explanation for this is just that Poloniex is having some problems with the wallet software and needs some input from Steem developers, but Steemit Inc is being again unresponsive (lack of focus and priorization). Or another but less probable reason is that Poloniex has found some real bugs from the wallet and Steemit devs are still trying to fix them. But it has been taking quite long time now.
Any technical issue can be fixed within 3 weeks. Or it has been even longer than that? I don't think this is a technical issue, otherwise Bittrex would have done the same thing.
I do think, though, that a part of the situation is somehow generated by Steemit Inc, but I'll hold any judgement on that. Things are, almost always, not what they seem.