SBD Pump and Dump On HitBTC sees price artificially soaring - 07 June 2018

in #steem6 years ago (edited)

I first noticed it logging into busy.org this week to create a post and claim my rewards. I saw that my wallet in dollar value was worth 10x and then saw the price of SBD sitting at $17, naturally I thought it was a glitch in the API and moved on since it was later corrected. Then it happened a few more times this week and I've seen fellow steemians posting questions about the massive increase and decided to do some digging.

So firstly the facts yes, Steem Dollars (SBD) has jumped up as high as 340% in the last week to a high of over $36 from its usually sturdy $1.77 value

Hitting up CMC I found that the panic stems from the fact that all of the purchases of SBD are coming from the HitBTC exchange alone – where SBD reached a price of $36 – compared to the Bittrex price of $1.68.

However, all of the chatter in the last few hours suggests we’re witnessing the upswing of a pump and dump. The Steemit platform hasn’t even registered the price gain of HitBTC’s SBD/BTC trading pair, and it’s unlikely they’ll do so until they see what happens. (However busy.org seems to be taking it into account in its calculations)

This has left some Steemit users desperately trying to sell their SBD holdings at a 340% gain, while others are way to sceptical to try anything and are just hoping that the expected dump doesn’t wreak too much havoc on their social media platform.

Unnatural Growth

This morning, SBD coins were valued at $1.74. Five hours later and the value price $7.75. The last time Steem Dollars reached this price was on May 17th, 2017, when SBD showed a similar spike in price and reached a value of $22.12.

HitBTC only accounts for 18.74% of the trading volume in the past 24 hours, but that’s where the concentration of SBD purchases have been the highest. The HitBTC movements only amount to $127,702 – less than half that of the volume being traded on Upbit against KRW.

Screen Shot 2018-06-07 at 08.14.22.png
SBD last 7 day chart

The Buffer Does its Job

A glance at today’s STEEM numbers show what might be a slight reaction to the SBD trades, but by and large has remained unaffected by the activity of its cousin-currency. STEEM had shown similar consistency to SBD prior to today; and had traded at around $2.30 – $2.36 for the last few weeks.

But in the middle of today’s SBD/BTC trades on HitBTC, the value of STEEM coins jumped suddenly, sharply, but only slightly – recording growth from $2.32 to £2.47.

This only amounts to 6%, and quickly cooled back down to $2.38 within the hour. This short flutter of activity may have been the sudden reaction by Steemit users to the unexpected SBD movements, but the steadying price of STEEM coins suggests that the chain reaction didn’t travel very far.

So the fluctuation doesn’t seem to be slowing. For more detailed analysis of the pump and dump check out this post by @azircon here

Screen Shot 2018-06-07 at 08.14.53.png
Trades on HitBTC

Pump and dump brings with it questions

More exchange availablity

Since SBD is only avaialble on a few exchanges while STEEM has been adopted by a range of exchanges meaning its less likley to be affected by the habits of one exchange. A few Steemians have already voiced their opinion and tried to drive requests to have SBD listed on exchanges like binance like:

The broken peg

While adding SBD to more exchanges might reduce the effects of a pump and dump on any one exchange it also shows us how the broken peg can be exploited and is this a cause to have it fixed. The intial use of SBD was to bring sustainablity while liquid STEEM remained volitile. SBD was supposed to be pegged to the US dollar but to do so without actually holding currency like we see with Tether can become a complicated task which hasn't been mentioned in a while since SBD has been pretty stable of late.

But now that its going through these pumps is it time to turn our attention back to this disccusion and prioritise a fix for this?

For more on the broken peg check out posts by these inlightened Steemians

Same time last year

This is not the first time SBD has been hit by pump and dumps close to last year this time they price went surging due to buying orders on Poloniex and even though STEEM was on a fall at the time SBD was hitting all time highs for the day.
While not as substantial as this pump you can check out the details of previous P&D's in posts by:

Take advantage of the pump

Has anyone created a hitBTC account since the news broke and tried to send SBD to trade for BTC? Could be an easy 25x sale if there are still outstanding buying orders that need to be filled.

Have your say

What do you think of these SBD pump and dumps? Should SBD be available on more exchanges? Should the broken peg be fixed so its tied to the dollar? Should it be scrapped in favour of something like Tether or TrueUSD?

Drop me a comment and let me know what you think and smash that upvote button and show me some love

Let's connect

For more cryptocurrency and my opinion on the market feel free to follow me @chekohler

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SBD If we see it go multiple exchange points up, then it is logical that we can see such an increase ( 330% what I saw last day ) , which is here happened in the last a couple of days . But I think we see soon something like this... steemit is small and we still have a lot to grow.

But it was fun to see it go up... I felt a little relieved for a moment :)))

Wouldn't more exchanges mean more supply? I see the current circulating supply is over 14mil but there's no max supply mentioned so i'm assuming more will be created to match demand because 14m that's less than the amount of BTC available., making it very scarce as a cryptocurrency

A agree steemit is still pretty small there are eCommerce sites in my country that have more users signed so it's got a long way to go but I think there are plenty of issues that need to be corrected before it can scale and we're like the guinea pigs figuring it out and reporting all the bugs and issues lol

It will definately need to adapt and evolve if its going to attract a larger audience

I agree with you :)

You have a minor misspelling in the following sentence:

Then it happend a few more times this week and I've seen fellow steemians posting questions about the massive increase and decided to do some digging.
It should be it happened instead of it happend.

Coins mentioned in post:

CoinPrice (USD)📈 24h📈 7d
BTCBitcoin7710.640$1.12%2.88%
SBDSteem Dollars1.738$0.73%0.25%
STEEMSteem2.390$2.66%2.63%
TUSDTrueUSD1.004$0.12%0.3%
USDTTether1.002$0.13%0.19%

Get your post resteemed to 72,000 followers. Go here https://steemit.com/@a-a-a

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