Witness update

I have reduced my SBD APR to 13% from 15%.

I have done this because SBD has been consistently a bit too strong, sometimes trading with a bid above 1.00 USD (and ask significantly above 1.00 USD). In addition I have liquidated several thousand SBD from my SBD stability fund (@smooth.witn.ssf) in order to reduce any short term trading premium on SBD. If SBD weakens (as a result of these measures or future measures that may become necessary, or just changes in market conditions), I will purchase SBD from the market in order to restore the stability fund to the 25K SBD target balance.

Some witnesses, observing the strengthening SBD, have either adjusted their feed discount downwards to zero or even negative, or are using an automated process which adjusts the feed discount downwards to zero as SBD approaches 1 USD. This is not a good policy. The feed discount is necessary to incentivize conversions and reduce debt even when, and indeed especially when, SBD is worth close to 1 USD. The current debt level is still too high, with reward payouts being done using STEEM instead of SBD, and the rate of conversions over the past 1-2 weeks has been quite low. Assuming a stable market cap, reaching the 2% debt ratio required for payments in SBD at the current rate will require six months.

In other news, I deployed an update to my internal market maker bot. This should result in more reliable higher liquidity on the internal exchange allowing instant, very-low-cost conversions in either direction of amounts up to about 40 SBD or 300 STEEM). Larger amounts can be converted at still very low cost using multiple trades. The internal market charges no trading fees and the the bot currently targets a spread between bid and ask of about 0.5%.

Rewards from this post (in whatever form received -- STEEM, SBD, and/or SP) will be converted to SBD and burned, as were previous witness post rewards.