Splinterlands offers a wide variety of assets with which you can essentially "invest" in the game. Cards, Land, and SPS are the main ones, although there are rarer things like Titles and Totems as well.
The only thing I don't consider an investment asset is DEC, but I'll save that for a separate conversation. It's only utility outside of being a currency is as an airdrop point, but that has a deadline to it which ends in about 6 months.
So between the three main assets I mentioned earlier - cards, land, and SPS - I have tried to diversify my assets across. They all have pros and cons so I'll break those down briefly before focusing on the point of this article, SPS.
Land is exciting, but ultimately we have no idea how the utility will work. Right now it is all speculation and while I would love to own as much land as possible (I own 1 plot), the unknowns around it make it hard for me to sell other assets for this one. Don't get me wrong, I think the team is going to knock it out of the park, but until we get a little more information (or I find some spare cash), I'll be happy with my 1 plot for now and try to find decent entry points in the future.
Cards are great as well. And I love treating them as digital real estate that I can buy and hold for price appreciation. While holding them, I can use them in my own decks or rent them out which is why I use the real estate analogy.
Here is the tough lesson learned about cards though, while a single card is in fact 'deflationary' due to the limited amount of BCX printed, "cards" as an asset class are somewhat inflationary, or at the very least subject to a wider variety of market forces.
Every time a new expansion is released, or reward cards go out of print and new ones come in, or even with the upcoming modern format rotating expansions in and out - cards values will fluctuate wildly. Both card prices as well as rental values are affected by this, and as evidenced by the release of Chaos Legion this effect can be very dramatic as the market reprices itself accordingly.
So does that mean I'm not buying cards or packs? Absolutely not. I believe in the game long term and am willing to play the long game. But when it comes to cards, I'm more focused on building a deck rather than investing for rental income. I'll take what I can get in terms of spare cards, but I'm not longer buying cards with the sole intent of renting them out - at least not at the scale I was a couple of months ago.
This might change in the future, but for now I would rather focus my efforts on stacking and staking as much SPS as possible. With a hard cap of 3 billion tokens, SPS is limited in it's supply with its list of utility set to rise in 2022 and beyond. As the team has said many times, if you want anything cool in this game, SPS will be how you get it.
One of the best investing mantras is to "be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful". Check anywhere online and combined with the downtrend in the general crypto market, the FUD is nonstop.
This means it's time to grab as much SPS as possible becuase I'm confident in the team's ability to deliver value in the future. Just look at the track record. Sure asset prices are down across the board, but the game is still up and running and players are still earning. Other games may offer exciting potential and hype, not to take anything away from them, but Splinterlands has a solid player base, an incredibly hard working dev team, and a game that is not only functional but fun and improving every single day with more innovation on the horizon.
So, this is NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE, I'm just sharing my perspective on where I am focusing my financial efforts when it comes to Splinterlands. Still very bullish long term and the best part about this investment - I can play with it to earn more along the way!
I think the game is going to do very well for the forseeable future and I like your points on SPS. I would like to find a way to better help new people get started in the game because at first it can seem like you are not going to get anywhere with out a largish investment. The more the whole ecosystem grows the better for evrybody.
Also on DEC, the way I see it holding DEC gets you solid amount from airdrop daily and when its over you can still use the DEC. So I am kind of pro investing in all that is offfered atm.
This is an interesting take on DEC, but to me it all depends on your entry point. If someone aped into DEC at $0.015, they are down more than 66% with the original capital they put in. If DEC goes back to the peg as intended by the end of the airdrop, they've lost over 90% value in their original capital.
I definitely get your point and you definitely got to watch where you buy in at. I personally don't know if i see it getting down to and staying at .001 level but who knows
The thing is, unless they change the algorithm which they've repeatedly said they will not, you will always be fighting against the system as it tries to get back to it's peg. The recent announcement with SPS being used for Riftwatchers instead of DEC is just another loss of utility for DEC.
yeah i saw that but they did say they would be adding more utility to DEC as well but I'm not syaing you are wrong , just saying I think it is worth the risk of holding some for the airdrop rewarsds alone but i also don't have hundreds of thousnds invested either. I just feel that it will grow at a steady rate along side sps just not at as good of margins.
If not for the airdrop though i would totally agree with you but as it is right now holding 1000 dollars worth DEC at todays prices gets you more than 1000 dollars worth of sps (by end of airdrop) and then you still have your initial investment of DEC. Off of $1000 dollars you get 222,222 DEC which earns you 4936 sps by end of airdrop and you still have your dec, investing the same in sps at the time gets 1151 of sps by end of airdrop(not counting restaking everyday but still)
Just keep in mind that more DEC is being printed every day, as well as card packs being opened so the total overall airdrop points will continue to increase. If you are not increasing your DEC holdings at the same ratio your daily airdrops will decrease.
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