Under the Flex

Well, that didn't go as planned.

Last season, I struggled through and still failed to reach where I wanted to end, finishing Wild in Champion 3 and Modern in Diamond 1. That should have had me starting this season in Diamond 3 and Gold 1, respectively.

Look at this crap!

I am starting Modern from Gold 2 and Wild from friggen' Silver 1!!

WTF.

Well, apparently I screwed something up with the rentals, meaning that I didn't have power at the end of EOS and rather than just losing my rewards chests or whatever, it dropped me down to the depths of hell (relatively speaking from where I normally play) into a place where I am going to struggle hard. I haven't played silver since the very first days I started playing, as I worked my way into gold and then diamond, and never fell back again. That was over a year ago now.

Crap!

I already struggle to maintain some semblance of ECR, now I have to move through an extra seven or so league tiers I wouldn't normally touch. This is very, very annoying, as it essentially wasted all of last seasons efforts. It wasn't a total loss though.

I like getting the SPS rewards, at least the ones from those upper leagues. For those who have a lot of cards renting out, it might even be worth playing again instead.

And then, next week there should be the announcement on Rift watchers, which will hopefully have a release date attached. At the equivalent of $5 of SPS per pack, I think they might sell slower than expected, but the demand is still going to be high, especially from those who have been stacking packs. I am not sure what I am going to do with this, but I really want a decent number of packs too, as I assume the cards will be worth it.

But, there are limits.

I have sunk so much crypto capital into Splinterlands it is quite insane, yet even though I am still very much in the red, I feel there is still good potential for it to be far more valuable. Whether it will reach those heights is impossible to say until it does or doesn't, but this is the game we play.

It isn't just Splinterlands, it is all of this crypto stuff, where we act in hope that it will be able to do what most of us are unable to accomplish in other economic arenas. Perhaps it is a good thing that I am somewhat of a financial failure in my life, as if everything was going "okay", I would never have got onto Hive, never have started to explore the crypto space at all. I might have been getting even pretty good results out of crypto - But what would I have missed?

An impossible question.

Many don't seem to look at it in this way it seems, but there is an opportunity cost for getting into crypto, but there is also an opportunity cost for staying out. At the lows, people seem to think that not getting in was the right decision after seeing it crash on those who did. But at the highs, they realize that they are now paying a cost for not getting in early.

For example, I didn't get into Splinterlands until mid-2021, but I have been buying tens of thousands in cards since, only to see the prices drop significantly. However, there are those renting out those same cards looking at the yearly ROI as not enough, when they bought those cards for a few dollars, or won them through in-game rewards.

As I mentioned to a good friend today, a 10% ROI might not seem like much in crypto when looking at the value of the cards, but it is good to remember what they paid for them as an early adopter of Splinterlands. I see it like buying a stock early. The dividends might only be 10%, but if you own 10 million worth that you bought for 100K, it is earning 1000% a year on the initial investment. There are people doing this with their Splinterlands cards, where they bought their collection for several hundred and through playing, and now they are worth a few hundred thousand and they are earning 10% on them a year, for a 20x return on the initial investment, without even selling. And the game is only four years old, so it is not like they had to wait an eternity for the return.

As said, I am in the red, because I am an idiot. I am too bold at the wrong times with the wrong things, too cautious at the wrong times with the wrong things. I play it safe when I should swing for the ropes, and throw caution to the wind when I should be playing defense.

Maybe one day, "dumb luck" will kick in and something I have done will somehow return enough to make up for all of the bad decisions, but I am not holding my breath in anticipation yet. A few years down the road though, if it hasn't happened by then, I suspect that just like not feeling like playing because I have been dropped down so far in the leagues, I might lose the will to keep hustling, keep grinding, keep trying for a result that never seems to arrive for me.

And quit.

Just after of course, the markets move and that is when all my dreams would have come true, but it is too late, I couldn't stick it through for just that bit longer. This is the value of having hope that things can be better, it keeps us going when they are not.

While I hope it is not the case, I feel that it isn't possible for me to get back to where I want to be this season, so the error in rentals or power or whatever I did wrong, is going to take a month to repair.

Back to the grind.

Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]