I think that the reason why both SBD and Steem have been devalued and suppressed all this time was to give an incentive to the whales to sell the coins. If you look at https://steemwhales.com, you will notice that very few users control the vast majority of the coins, and that is not a good thing for Steem as a platform.

By keeping the price of SBD high and Steem relatively lower for the medium term, the small minnows will at least get a chance to acquire more Steem Power by selling their author rewards in SBD and get Steem to powerup, which would improve the overall distribution of wealth on the platform.