21st Mar 2022. Something has been bothering me for the past month or so.

I set the main objective for myself to own enough Collection Power (CP) to hit Silver II without renting. I started out with around 15,000 CP, and now I’m at 31,335 CP.

I’ve been patiently looking at PeakMonster’s Best CP/Cost Ratio tab over the weeks to find good deals to jump at. It’s the cheapest way to build CP, right?

And I’ve been noticing something strange in the numbers.

2 opposing forces are at work here that is confusing me. Let me explain.

CP/Cost ratio increasing

CP/Cost measures roughly how much it cost to buy CP relative to the USD.

It gives us a quick understanding of whether the market in Splinterlands is up or down. (We are blocking out some of the noise in the crypto market by using this.)

When I first started getting serious in accumulating CP a month ago, it was around 160-170CP per USD.

After an end of a season, it can spike to around 180-200CP per USD.

Currently, it’s sitting at 210CP per USD.

This is good news for a buyer like me because 1USD fetches more CP, getting more bang for the buck.

DEC cost of cards increasing

On the other hand, the actual DEC cost of cards has been steadily increasing.

I did a calculation a month ago to figure out how much DEC I was willing to spend to hit Silver II.

The number was between 7.5-8.5DEC per BCX for each common card.

Right now, it’s sitting at 8.850DEC per BCX for the cheapest common cards.

So, prices have increased since the past month, right?

Confused by the contradicting numbers

Now wait a minute… how can CP/Cost increase (good for buyer) while actual DEC cost increase (bad for buyer) concurrently?

This trend has been going on for some time and it doesn’t seem to be slowing down.

Are prices of cards going up or going down?

What is going on here?

DEC and Hive prices

The only explanation I can think of is that outside market forces are at play here.

The most likely culprit would be our dear DEC.

Looking at Coingecko, the DEC value has gone down over the past month. It has broken the credible USD0.003 resistance that many players were banking on.

With DEC value going down relative to USD, it is only logical to conclude that we are paying more DEC to get the same cards.

To confirm this theory, I took a quick look at Hive prices.

Using Coingecko again, we can see that Hive has more or less maintained its value in the same 30-day period.

Hive is chosen here as a proxy to the valuation of the crypto market. (This could be a misguided choice, but it’s one I’m rolling with.)

Reflection

To conclude, even though prices of cards are going down, we are paying more in DEC because the value of DEC has gone down even faster.

This is bad since I need to get more cards to build my CP.

I need DEC prices to pick up again if I want to “spend” less DEC per card.

But the market is temperamental and difficult to predict.

Who knows whether this is good news or bad news…

P.S. If my inference on the market is off, please let me know in the comments. Share some data on what is happening too!