Steem Dollars Below $0.85; Increase in APR Requested to all Witnesses Voters!
The SBD Peg is of target; What does that mean?
Steem Dollar is a Pegged Asset and is supposed to be just that, pegged to another asset. In this case its the USD. During the last weeks this target has been sliding downwards and at the moment the SBD is trading at a lower range of $0.85 and has been below that at some occasions the last days.
This means that anyone that uses the asset to pay for gods will gain less for their money than they are supposed to. At the moment with up to -15-20%.
Last Week
Last Day
Source: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/steem-dollars/
Increased Interest; One Way of Solving The Problem
One solution that can be done to solve the problem with a declining SBD price is to raise the Interest paid for holding the asset in your Steem wallet. It makes people less eager to sell the asset on the market, making the price less likely to decline.
Vote on Witnesses!
The only way that the Interest can be changed on Steem, which is currently at 0%, is to vote on Witnesses that have a higher APR setting. The top 20 witnesses sets the interest price, and many at the top have no interest at all.
Current Top 20 Witnesses
Today there are 5 witnesses that promote Interest, and only 3 of them are above 2%.
Source: https://www.steemd.com/witnesses
Encourage every Witness to Raise their APR Setting
I encourage all witnesses to raise their APR to give at least 1-2% interest to make users hold their asset, rather than selling them. With a price this low we can and should have an incentive for users to hold our asset.
Encourage every User to Vote on Witnesses with a higher APR
It's all up to every user to say what they see fit the best and vote for whoever they think will or are doing a good job. At the moment I really think we should encourage a higher APR and thus encourage those that are promoting that.
There are many witnesses below the Top 20 that has a higher setting for interest, and it can easily be viewed at https://steemd.com/witnesses in the column namne "APR".
I've raised my own Interest setting to 5%, and will keep watching the outcome of the changes with the price.
Current Changes:
- Interest: Raised from 1.5% to 5%.
- Bias Feed: At the moment I have no bias price feed.
Vote on your witnesses today at https://steemit.com/~witnesses
For those of you who find it to challenging to keep up, follow my Minnow Witness Project where I analyze good upcoming witnesses on the Bottom 50 witness list. Here you can also see witnesses that support a higher Interest an how you can use a Proxy Voter to vote on your behalf.
Vote for me as Witness
Enjoying what I do and contribute to the community, please vote for me as a Witness or a Steemit Proxy Voter.
By voting for me as a witness, you will support an active witness on Steem and BitShares. I believe a witness should keep up-to-date on current happenings and be a conduit between the many users and the system.
Read my Witness Posts: BitShares, Steemit
Support my Projects: Project Minnow Witness, Gridcoinstats.eu, Crypto.fans
Steemit: sc-steemit 
BitShares: sc-ol 
Thank you, I've been wondering this for a while now, sure it was wonderfully high when it was at about $1.85.
However it has been under a dollar for sometime, and it seems anytime BTC goes up, SBD adjusts down. In fact at one point a few days ago it was more expensive to buy Steem internally with SBD than it was to just sell the SBD and rebuy.
You have my vote, and I hope other witnesses follow suit.
Cgee
Why this witness don't just keep it high.
The reason to keep a low interest is to make the price towards the USD (the SBD:USD peg) to not go to high. A to high price for the SBD token is not good either and would hurt business trying to sell goods for a stable price.
An acceptable tolerante is a price +/- $0.1, in my opinion.
Hey,
this comes a bit late but this reads like as if the witnesses were actively trying to keep the SBD price down. Do they still do it?
And: How does this APR work and what does it mean? Does it stand for "average price ratio" to the US-$?
I find this very strange.
I updated my APR earlier today to 1%. I'll keep it to 1%, and if the trend continues, I'll bump it up to 5%, depending on the price.
Voted for you as witness. Thanks.
I've been hoping to find this info at some point. Thanks so much for sharing this and for letting me know about the Minnow Witness Project. Nice!
Followed, 100% upvoted, and resteemed.
upvoted and resteemed I believe this to be a good idea
I have voted for you as witness. Thanks for watching out on the interest
Thank you for this information. I have only been here a short time and don't really understand the witness thing. I've only voted for maybe six. So I guess I should go in and get these other ones. You are the second post I've read about the apr. The other person also thought it should go up.
I upvoted, followed, resteemed, and tweeted this post. I will go vote for you and for the others you suggest. This is very worrying to me as I try to figure this place out.
Hi @fitinfun,
It's very good that You've already voted for 6 witnesses and only been here for a short time. You shouldn't feel to worried about it, but it's good that you are concerned about the topic.
Witnesses are people that run software that makes the blockchain, the public ledger that contains all the information and actions done on Steemit, on servers across the world. The witness list consists of around ~75 active people for the moment and all are doing their part to make sure the network stays stable.
There are 20 main witnesses, each generating one block every 3 second and one extra backup witness that generates the 21st block. This witness is selected based on voting and all backup witnesses takes turn to secure the network. If a main witness fails to generate blocks for one day, or they disable their server, a backup witness also goes in and helps with securing the network.
You can read much more about the topic in the #witness category if you are interested in how it all works.
Well, I will say this platform is very stable compared to some other places I use. I find a lot to like about Steemit as to interface, the clean site, and great social media sharing.
I really appreciate that explanation and I think it will hold me for now. I am up to my eyeballs in learning since I got here. It's fun, with good people, and I feel hope I will have a good place to get my message out. I'm trying to support what I can and not worry about what I don't understand.
I vote for people who ask for votes and seem like they want to do the job. So that is how many I have run into in about 7 weeks. I'm grateful you are all keeping it going. My technical skills are few :)
Thank you for updating the interest. I wish it was automatic that when sbd drops below a level. The way it is being done now is too slow.
UPVOTED. very good. I would be happy if you like to follow me and give your opinion about my posts. Thanks :D