The Play2Earn Report - Resurrections...?

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Well, hello everybody! It's me, @khazrakh, and yes, I'm still alive. It's been more than half a year since I've published anything on Hive. Well, to tell the truth, it's been more than half a year since I interacted with Hive in any meaningful way at all. Up until then I had been publishing articles quite regularly and enjoyed myself quite a bit doing so. So... what happened? Where have I been? Well, several things...

First and foremost, obviously, Splinterlands happened. When SPS was released and the daily airdrop started, things went completely nuts. Before those events, I held a region that I had paid 7,500$ for and a mediocre Champion Level collection worth maybe another 10,000$. In a matter of a few weeks, that added up to assets worth almost a million dollars. Things were crazy and they kept getting crazier by the day, a week of playing Splinterlands earning me more than my (great paying!) job earns me in the whole months.

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But with that mind-blowing success some rather bad things happened as well. First of all, I realized that I had to work out my tax. Earning some tokens on a random blockchain that basically nobody outside of the crypto world has ever even heard about is one thing, earning thousands of dollars a day is something completely different, especially as I intended to take enough profit to pay for everything I had ever invested in Splinterlands. Figuring out how everything worked literally took me months, trying to find a solid tax advisor, working through countless articles all coming to slightly different conclusions. In the end, I've had a legal opinion created for me by a consultant specializing in crypto law so I finally had some peace of mind about that whole matter.

But figuring out taxation for my Splinterlands earning was only a part of the equation. It also made me realize just how much German tax law hates Hive and anything associated with it. Receiving (at least parts) of the Hive staked as Hive Power and all the 2nd layer tokens you earn on top of it - it's quite the nightmare if you don't know how to handle everything. To be frank, I've panicked a bit when I realized just how complicated that whole stuff was and just as with Splinterlands, it took a long time to figure out how I could use Hive without burning myself through taxation. By the time I got there and would have been prepared to start blogging again, other things had happened as well, though.

I was foolish enough to more or less openly tell people I considered my friends about what was going on in Splinterlands. I didn't mean to brag or anything, it just felt like something important was happening in my live and I just wanted to share it. I'm not going to talk about some of the things that happened during that time, but it's terrifying how people change when they realize that there's potentially a lot of money to be extracted from a friend. Some of my relations turned toxic really fast and if I've learned anything from all that it's that it's best not to talk about it if you are lucky in live, period.

So I went quiet completely, only talking in the Splinterlands Discord and removing myself from all other blockchain business. With things cooling down a bit and a lot of free time at hand over the holidays, I finally had a long internal discussion about whether I want to start writing articles again or not and finally settled with a maybe. I felt like I at least wanted to share a short explanation about what made me disappear so suddenly and, frankly, by now I miss blogging quite a bit. It has been an integral part of my life during most of the pandemic and I've met some awesome people around here. I'm not sure yet if I'll return to any of these old places again and neither am I sure if I'm really prepared to start blogging again on a more frequent level but we'll see about that.

Either way, I'm still alive, I'm good, and I've won 3 Splinterlands tournaments in the last 7 days which kinda makes me talk a lot more about that awesome game again ;-)

So for now, thank you all for reading and I just might see you again really soon - cheers guys!



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21 comments
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Welcome back @khazrakh & nice to see you absolutely crushed it with the land. Having made that much I understand that making posts is no longer a top priority. I'm looking forward to more of your content again!

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Thanks for the warm welcome, I'm really blown away by all the comments I got with the article. I'm quite confident I'll get back to at least making semi-regularly articles again :-)

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It's great to hear from you! When I saw how splinterlands had evolved I was thinking... probably @khazrakh is now full time splinterlands player lol. I didn't own a region but I had quite some assets and I managed to pull some money out of the game as well but it was in a different league than yours and I didn't lose sleep over tax issues:-). I also made the mistake to share the value of my deck with some people and envy was the only reaction that I got...

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You'd think people... friends... would be happy for you. But no, envy wasn't even the worst of it, some people simply couldn't handle it, feeling like it was utterly undeserved, like I just lucked into all this, like I didn't spend countless hours building my collection from scratch...

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Taxation and crypto is a very tricky combination and it will be different for every country as tax laws are usually extremely complicated.

In the Netherlands, as long as you’re not actively trading, it should count as capital for which there is a small percentage to be paid over the total value on 1st of January.

If however it looks like your activity was the reason for the growth of your assets, then it could be seen as ‘income from other work’, which means you will easily have to pay 40% tax on these gains and over 50% if it is a lot.

So, is doing daily missions and taking part in tournaments enough reason to make it work, or is it still capital that just happened to increase quickly due to the market?

It is sad that some of your relationships turned toxic after people heard about your success with your splinterlands investments.

Take your time, but do engage with us from time to time. There’s quite a few people here that have similar stories, perhaps on a smaller scale. So they might treat you differently.

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In Germany it's basically income tax (42% for me) whenever you earn any crypto. Because it gets staked right away it means that I will have to pay tax on any staking rewards again and I won't be able to sell it without paying tax again for 10 years after unstaking. I only pay tax if it goes up in value of course, but if it goes down in value I don't get any tax back. So in essence I pay tax upon tax upon tax... pretty annoying stuff :-/

I will start to engage more with Hive again, really blown away by all the comments I got on my post, never expected that!

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Wow, that’s indeed a tax system that doesn’t work at all for crypto, especially hive with the 50% staked rewards and rewards for staking/curating.

I’m glad you got those responses on your post. As early adopters of crypto we should encourage each other. A lot of other people still don’t understand.

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Awesome to read a post from you again, really missed those weekly posts :)

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And I have to admit I missed doing them... thanks a lot :-)

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Welcome back, khazrakh!! Really good to have you here with us again! You always made a big part of quality content in my subscriptions on a lot of projects! :D
-The only part I could live without is probably your music articles. I remember you had a preference for guitars... ;)

It probably is not necessary to come back to all of your previously used platforms! But it would be awesome if you would return at least to one or two! ;)

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Haha yes, I do like guitars... ;-)
I think I'll mostly focus on gaming for now, got a lot of stuff I want to talk about in the coming weeks. Not sure how much content I'll get to make each week but I aim to get to at least 2-3 articles again.

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It's good to see you back again, though I see you in the SPL discord often, and yes.. don't tell anyone outside of this about your fortunes. People go strange when they are not getting what you have benefitted from.

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Thanks a lot, feels great to be back!
I was really surprised by all the negative reactions I got. If a friend had told me about something similar I would have been really happy for him, even celebrating his success. But no, seems some people can't handle it at all. Well moving forward, I will only share my stories anonymously on Hive or in Discord.

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Welcome Back.

Some of my relations turned toxic really fast and if I've learned anything from all that it's that it's best not to talk about it if you are lucky in live, period.

Great lesson learnt. In fact I will advise you to move funds in some another accounts that people cannot associate with you and keep peeping on your wealth.

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta

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Ya, that's solid advise sadly. I've moved my gains around quite a bit and moving forward I'll just keep to myself, only sharing with a few select people I know are actually happy for me and won't try to get their share any chance they see...

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I just heard the news! I thought your Splinterlands article was the first then I found this one! Sorry about the problems you've been experiencing. I know how you must have felt though, so excited and you have to tell somebody in real life about your accomplishments. Whenever I try to tell people, they just don't understand the significance. It's great to have you back and to know your are well though! You were sorely missed.

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Welcome back to Hive.

Crypto tax is going to be an emerging topic in 2022 and beyond. I can just imagine how difficult determining the basis for each of your investments must be. I'm guessing they are treated as if they were individual stock trades...

And family/friends and money don't mix well. Sorry you had to find that out the hard way...

Best wishes for 2022!

Cheers!

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