I read that you were wondering about steem, SBD and steem power. Here's an article on them that may help some. I was completely mixed up on them too for awhile. I actually went looking at about a dozen people's wallets just to see if I could figure out what was going on but it didn't help much. This video helped some. From what I've learned, steem-backed dollars are about $1 U.S. There's a peg. Payouts are in SBD. The price of steem on the other hand fluctuates. I think one steem right now costs about $1.80. Steem power is like invested steem. It gives you influence here (determines how much your vote is worth) and you can "power it down" (withdraw a certain amount over a certain period. It used to be over 2 years but now is 13 weeks I believe ).
It gets a little easier to understand once you do a little more with it, like send some SBD to people or receive some. You might see that people offer SBD in posts and there are contests that do as well.
Now I'm at the point of starting to look into what to do with this SBD and steem to turn it into USD. THAT is really advanced Steemit, I'm starting to see. There are so many different options and steps, and the directions aren't always in clear English. Everyone seems to do things a little differently too. I'm just trying to learn about it all right now. From what I see, you use an exchange to turn steem/sbd into bitcoin or another coin, and then send those coins to a wallet. I've signed up with coinbase for a wallet and then from there I may see about getting something called a "shift" card, which I believe is a Visa bitcoin card. Whew! I think it may sell your bitcoin into USD as you use it. But so many people here have figured out some system for themselves that I'm encouraged that I will too. There are a lot of posts here giving advice about it and I've just started reading them. Have you figured out how to use your keys yet?
You are so kind. Thanks for helping. :-) I gave you a penny Upvote. LOL! What do you mean about keys?
I had so many replies to get to and other things to do that I forgot to reply here. If you don't know about keys yet, there are a bunch of them. If I'm not mistaken, your private owner key is the one you first sign in with and they tell you to keep it very safe and even keep a copy offline. That key does everything, but they don't recommend you use it all the time. When you're just logging in, posting and voting, use the post key, and when you might be doing something like transferring steem dollars or changing your profile, then use your active key. Go to your wallet page and you'll find your keys under permissions. The ones you first see are public (I'm not quite sure how they're used), but you need to get the private posting and active keys. One you just click on show, and the other you need to use your owner key to see it. And then you can use those most of the time and it's more secure.
You are so helpful, and such a blessing! Thank you!
Thank you, and you're welcome! Glad to help if I can.
When I look at the keys, the private owner key is not the same as the one I have saved, so i am totally confused. Oh dear, I am afraid to log out in case I don't get back in again!
Yeah, it's a little confusing. Bitcoin and other cryptocoins use keys and so many people talk about them like everyone understands them.
Did you write down or print out the key/password that was given to you when you first logged in, the one that they say to make sure you keep in a safe place because they can't retrieve it for you? You can always sign in with that one.
As far as I know, the one that told you to write down and keep safe is your private owner key. It's the only one that doesn't appear anywhere on your account for security reasons. It's a master key. The one that shows up under permissions isn't the private one, I don't believe. I'm not sure what people use it for, though.
If you look at your post and active keys, there are buttons that say "show private key" and "login to show." Click on "show private key" and you get another key that's different than the private key. That second key is the one that's best to login for normal use. If you have to do something like move steem or change your profile picture, then you use the private active key, and you'll be asked for that if you're signed in with your posting key. You need to log in with your private owner key to get your private active key, like it says, " login to show." I took those private post and active keys and keep them off the site too.
Thanks for explaining that. I have my first key saved all over the place on hard drives and written down. I was confused when it didn't show up there! Totally baffling!