Building the Official Utopian.io Help Center
The Steem economy has three native currencies that serve different purposes and have different properties.
STEEM: this is the base currency of the blockchain and it serves as a resource allocation tool when powered up and transformed into Steem Power. It can be traded for any other cryptocurrency on exchanges at any time.
Steem Power: this is STEEM that has been powered up and committed to a 13 week vesting contract. It can only be withdrawn in 13 weekly withdrawals. Steem Power has a direct impact on the amount of rewards an account can give to posts. The more Steem Power an account has, the more rewards it can allocate to posts through upvotes. Steem Power also determines the amount of bandwidth an account is given to perform operations on the Steem blockchain.
Steem Blockchain Dollars (SBD): when rewards are paid out, the accounts are given SBD and Steem Power (or Steem Power alone if a user chose so). SBD is a form of liquid STEEM and it can be traded for STEEM on the internal exchange on steemit.com or for other cryptocurrencies on other exchanges.