Let's Talk Splinterlands - Implications Of A Bear Market

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With the price action we've seen in the last 48 hours it's probably safe to assess that we are finally certain to be in a bear market again. 69,000$ is going to stay as an all time high for BTC for quite a while now and the market will have to adjust to this new reality. While it had to happen eventually, it still seems like a rather large majority of people was surprised by the sudden decline and most probably expected BTC to hit 100k before going down, some even saying it should go as high as 250k in this cycle. Whatever we thought, the reality is that it won't make it any time soon, we'll likely get another shot in 2025.

There are a lot of experts around here that can tell you a lot more about what's going on in the broader crypto space so I'm not going to waste your time with any more on that matter. What I really want to talk about is Splinterlands and the implications this bear market might have for my favorite (blockchain) game.


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Short term, the implications are pretty obvious: The market is bleeding and so is Splinterlands. SPS is dipping alongside all the other currencies and DEC, only borrowing its value from SPS anyway, is following along. At the time of writing this, SPS is traded at about 0.1$ and there's no telling how low it's going to go in the next few days as this is mostly going to depend on how low BTC goes. No matter the crypto project, if BTC goes down you go down alongside it. There's no escape from it, or at least there isn't for now.

Splinterlands has proven in the past that it doesn't need a bull market to survive and even thrive and SPS had its own little bull run, including an impressive blow off top, without BTC having terribly much to do with it. Obviously, ever since, things are going down and they are going down still. This is not going to stop any time soon, either, so be prepared to see more bloodshed before things could potentially get better again. But let's look at the situation a little more in detail!


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The good news is - there's no risk of Splinterlands going out of business any time soon. Over the last year, the company made a pretty amazing revenue and although some of it will be lost to the bear market, they should be more financially stable than they have ever been before. According to one of the town-halls they could go for 3 years without making any additional revenue right now and would still be able to keep the lights on and pay everybody they are employing right now. And that's the other important number to keep an eye on - right now there are more than 100 people working for Splinterlands - that's a damn huge number!

It's also what got me the most excited about the whole project right now. We've got to meet a lot of the new faces during the last few town-halls and damn, there are a lot of really talented individuals along the team now. It will still take some time before they all work as a big team and before all these new acquisitions start to really pay off but there's a real chance that they will eventually. With that amount of people actively working on and for the game, we could potentially see a lot of huge stuff added to the game in 2022.

We already know about the land expansion, we know about Rift Watchers, but there have also been some early hints about other things that we don't know anything about yet. If they do manage to deliver some quality content, if they do manage to really get marketing going, if they do manage to establish themselves in the eSports sector, well, then things could really go wild this year. Not only that, though. Splinterlands could potentially manage to decouple itself from BTC, at least partially. We are already seeing it a bit with card prices - these seem to be a lot less affected by what Bitcoin does and a lot more by what happens within Splinterlands itself.


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There are risk as well, of course. Short term, there's a lot of selling pressure on SPS and the bear market is only going to make things so much worse. If things go really bad, SPS could dip another 80% from where it is right now. Even that wouldn't necessarily be an issue long term, but it would make their job a lot harder obviously.

There's also the risk that they fail to deliver on the new features they have promised. What if land is lame, nobody likes spells&items, and people just stop playing? Personally, I don't think this is going to be happening at all, but it's important to look at all the possibilities if you want to make up your mind about how to progress.

2022 is going to be a make or break year for Splinterlands. If things work out like we are all hoping, we could see another bull run for SPS and all things Splinterlands despite the general crypto market being deep in crypto winter. The company has the money, the gifted people, and the already functioning game to make it happen. I expect to see many other blockchain games die in fire these next months and years, but in case of Splinterlands, I think there's a real chance that it will go mainstream even before the next crypto bull market starts.


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So what does that mean for me and my strategy moving forward? Well, most importantly, I'll mostly stop taking profits from the game just like I stop taking profits from any other project during the bear market. My goal is to still have a payout of 1000$ a week from all my crypto hustle combined because I want to prove to myself that I could live from crypto even during the bear market. But if possible, these payouts won't come from Splinterlands but from other projects. Other than that, everything I make within the game and even some that I make outside of the game will go towards growing my account. Once I've finished my Chaos Legion collection I will stack up on summoners and gold foil cards on a daily basis.

I won't buy SPS and I won't buy DEC for now, though. SPS I get from airdrops, staking, and tournament rewards and DEC is only valued above its peg because of the SPS airdrop. I might change my mind if we go below 0.05$ per SPS though - at that price it would just feel like I had to pull the trigger. Let's see if we do go that low, I'd say it's possible but I hope we won't. Either way, I know things are looking grim in crypto right now, but I'm still bullish on Splinterlands and I'm still convinced that the success of 2022 could potentially blow what happened last Fall out of the water if they play their cards right!

And that's all from me for today, thank you all for reading and see you next time.



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15 comments
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Thanks for this post, really insightful!

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Cheers man, glad you liked it :-)

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Being able to pay the wage of 100 employees for 3 years speaks of a very full treasury and I believe it wasn't always like that in the past. We shouldn't forget that Splinterlands has tons of income sources like potions sales, card sales, 5% transaction fees on all the markets. Even if people trade packs and cards on atomichub, they get a comission. I'm definitely not worried about their income and I believe that they have more in store for us than what appears. I'm happy with everybody dumping their stuff and selling their tokens, this makes stuff much cheaper for the ones remaining :-)

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Aggy did tease a bit about the more in store stuff at Dygycon again just yesterday. Saying there's a lot he's hoping to tell us about and also have us play pretty soon.
With the right announcements and ensuing FOMO, things could turn hot again pretty soon...

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Great read! It is impressive you are able to live off of crypto even during a bear market - truly speaks to your ability to grow your wealth during a bull market.

Which upcoming part of Splinterlands do you reckon is most likely to make the project even larger? Myself, I believe the land expansion will bring a new kind of investors into the game and drive prices of most assets up - the demand for cards will increase greatly once land comes into play.

!1UP

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While it's true that the bull market is what generates the wealth, it's the bear market that makes all this possible. Without ample time to accumulate before the last bull run I wouldn't have been in a position to really play my cards. So as crazy as it may sound, I'm somewhat excited for another crypto winter.

I absolutely agree on land being the main catalyst for growth this year. Both in terms of gameplay and economy that is. I'm a little afraid that there's too much land in the hands of too few players but I guess if they can set the requirements to working your plots just right land should get distributed quite well over time - be it through actual sales or just by renting it out.

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Splinterlands is going to be fine in the long run because it is a game offering real value. The thing that makes me nervous about SPS is that it is divorced from the game.

In-game currencies that are vital to playing a game are the ones that will thrive. I'm not sure how SPS will fair in the long run due to the fact that you can play Splinterlands for your whole life and never once have a need to touch SPS (it's also being printed at an absurd rate due to the airdrops everyday).

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It's true that SPS won't be needed to play Splinterlands, the idea is to have everything cool withing the game require you to either have SPS staked or pay a premium to someone that has. I do like the concept but we'll have to see how things play out in the end.

Regarding the inflation rate - it's a problem short turn, especially because of the VCs just dumping what they get, but on the other hand the total print will be 3B and that's known already so people can plan accordingly. I'm not stacking SPS to sell it again anyway, so I'm not too much worried about it's short term value. Things should improve a lot once the airdrops end.

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Splinterlands isn't going away but a lot of games will definitely be disappearing. I don't know whether or not they can get players to keep playing when prices are going down after promoting themselves as play to earn.

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta

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To me that's the big question for this next bear market - if Play2Earn can work in crypto winter than we are in for some life changing growth in the next bull market. If it can't then this should change our approach to these kind of projects. If any of the current projects can make the cut, though, my bet is on Splinterlands.

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What made SPS explode was crypto traders becoming attracted to the new BSC token. What kept Splinterlands stable for years before was their awesome community (players & team) and product. Traders will come back. Community stays true!

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Spot on! Most if not all negativity currently is coming from people that bought in at an unsustainable top and are now blaming everybody but themselves for it ;-)

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Without going into detail, what other projects are you involved in that will help deliver $1k a week? That's quite a large number and you could live quite comfortably in majority of countries on that kind of money ;)

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