The high SBD price lift the floor of Steem and was basically the architect behind the Steem rise
That's highly unlikely considering the entire crypto market was on a massive bull run. And when crypto turned down, so did STEEM despite SBD still being very overvalued for months. In fact STEEM underperformed a lot of other cryptos including during the period when SBD was overvalued. In my opinion people believe this largely because of the post hoc fallacy (coupled with looking at STEEM and SBD as being much more of a closed system than they are, instead of small parts of a much wider and bigger cryptocurrency economy). But I would agree with you that it is all speculation, so we can't ever know for sure.
SBD being worth $1+ does help the price of STEEM via the HODLing effect that @timcliff describes, but it doesn't have to be $10 (which then destroys the utility of having a stable token rather than yet another speculative token since people can, and did, lose 90% of their money holding it). Some small premium or even par value is enough.
Steem prices would rise, I am sure on that once our user base increase and affluence that comes with it would help...Retention rate and good sentiment are other factors... The HODLing effect has some merits to it and I would go as far as saying the bidbots certainly play a huge part in the later half....
I remain a critic of Stablecoins so excuse me, I do however see a use for them primarily as a hedge for countries who would like exposure to USD but can't hold them because of political reasons like sanctions, casing point Turkey/ Venezuela but the merchant adoption theory I can't buy into it...
Steem remains the King, it would probably been trading and holding steady 10 dollars if it has the supply of SBD... I watch the trading on varying exchange, it takes triple the BTC volume to move Steem prices but as user growth trend higher things should plateau and then take off but for now we should really think twice about debt ratio but lets see how it goes
Good work by you and Tim, I see you working hard on this, lets hope it goes as plan but speculators would be speculators, they see an opportunity they gonna go for it, we should encourage user who has it in moments like these who wants Steem to make the most of it
I would say we agree more than disagree about use cases. Merchant adoption of cryptocurrencies (whether stable value or not) seems to be mostly a solution looking for a problem but people wanting to hold stable value for a variety of reasons is a demonstrated huge market.
It is fair to be skeptical of stablecoins (in some ways I am as well) but I would say this is more than anything an ongoing experiment. The are big challenges but also big opportunities.