Beg, Borrow, Steal

Okay - don't beg, nor steal - but borrowing is fine, if you ask first and are committed to returning. In this regard, trust is sometimes required and one of the things that I highly value on Hive, though I trust very few people overall.

Yesterday, @mattclarke linked a "Monster Maverick Show" video by @nealmcspadden talking more about the Splinterlands nodes. Neal confused me with Excel wizardry and made it all sound so awesome, that I decided to move up my planned purchase of a second node license and get one ASAP.

Of course, nothing comes easy and the first hurdle is, the node is expensive. But, I had a little stable coin squirreled away doing nothing, so decided to put it to work. However, the next problem was, the vouchers to buy the node license. As I have said before in a previous post, I will paraphrase a bit.

• Presale was 2000 licenses (I bought one here)
• We are in Tranche 1, where there are 3000 licenses on offer (~2300 left)
• Price is $3000
• Max discount with vouchers is 1500 dollars (500 vouchers)
• Vouchers are riding at 80 cents each on Hive-Engine secondary market

My problem was, I only had 282 vouchers, meaning that my max discount was 846. But, vouchers are 80 cents, so since they are worth 3 dollars each in discounts, it makes sense to buy. 218 vouchers would cost ~174 dollars. This means that the license would cost me;

1500+174+282 vouchers

So, I do have a little group of Splinterlands gurus that I rely on for many bits of information and perspective, who also happen to have a few assets themselves, including vouchers.

Does anyone have 220 vouchers to spare and I will return 250 in about 11 days?

@azircon answered the call, fell for my charming demeanor and said Yes!

Muhahahhah....

While I am not likely to do a runner for a couple hundred dollars in vouchers, I would rather pay the 30 "interest" on the 220 to someone I know over the counter, rather than off the secondary market. This isn't the first time we have helped each other of course and for me, this has been a common practice for many Hive assets over the last 5 years. Help people, get helped - it is part of a community. But, in order to get this help, trust is required.

This is crypto: Trust no one.

But, this is crypto, understand the risks.

Anyway, Azir will get 30 vouchers in about 11 days, which is not a bad turnaround of 13% or about 400% APR on a static asset sitting idle. And for me, the cost is "zero" with the opportunity cost being the value of the vouchers - assuming 80c, that is 24 dollars. However, there is another factor to consider.

I get about 16 vouchers a day based on my stake and the node I already own, which means that if I was patient and waited, I would have the required vouchers in 14 days anyway, which would save me the 174 dollar cost of buying them now, or the 24 dollars in vouchers to pay back the debt. However, getting the second node now means increasing my drop by about 7.5 vouchers a day, so the payback period is around 3 days shorter. That is only about 15 dollars worth of extra vouchers, but it also means that is 15 in my "pocket" (cost averaging the license) and 24 in Azir's, for a total of 40. It is kind of, extra value from thin air neither of us would have got otherwise.

Now, I am pretty sure Azir would have loaned me the 220 without the interest, but I don't want something for nothing, so offered it up front anyway. If I had "fully leveraged" our relationship (not a good way to talk about relationships, but he will understand what I am getting at), that would mean 40 dollars in my pocket - but I prefer the win-win scenario by far.

So, now I have 2 node licenses.

Big deal!

Now, this is all speculative of course, but there are factors that are important to note in the future, that have a lot of unknown variables. However, while having the stables sitting is a safety net and could be used to earn on by buying the dip later, there is actually a bit of trusted stability in the nodes too, since the current low for them, assuming that there is demand to hold, is going to be 1500, the price of license with max discount using vouchers that are worth zero. But, vouchers are not currently worth zero, meaning that the node licenses will trickle in an income through voucher drops on them - currently about 7.5 a license, ~$6 worth a day.

But, the variable factors that come into play are things like the Riftwatcher pack release, where they are going to be exclusively bought with SPS. But, I just spent a lot of SPS on the node!! Yeah, but it was actually the stable I spent first, It wasn't SPS I was holding, so that doesn't count and now, that SPS is mostly out of circulation, since buying the node burned the majority of it. Now, if there is a presale of Rifwatchers, the assumption is that in order to qualify, vouchers are likely to be needed, as that is what happened with Chaos Legion.

So, now I have some vouchers coming in at about 33% the speed of what they were, meaning that if RW are released in 60 days from now, I will have about 450 extra vouchers in my wallet than I would have had with a single node license. Plus, When I bought it last night, I added a little more stable to "make sure" and took about an extra 5000 SPS, which I staked for a current return paid in SPS and voucher, of 46% APR.

And again, while node licenses are a volatile asset, they are less volatile than many others I hold and, if there is a demand, once Tranche 1 sells, the "low price" on them is the cost of Tranche 2, which is 2500 minimum. And, this is before the licenses launch and get access to additional SPS drops on them, after the current SPS airdrop on stake and CP etc ends, which should in itself, put upward pressure on price - though granted, we are entering into a pretty heavy bear market, which is set to last for the next 6 months at least.

So, as you can see, while all that really happened was me buying a Splinterlands Node License, in order for me to justify it, I had to go through a decision making process to warrant spending the 1500, plus the cost of the potential income from the 282 vouchers I already held, as well as the begging borrowing of the extras from the Azir etc to decide - yep, another would be worth it.

All of this is a calculated risk based on a whole lot of variables I have effectively zero control over, but in order to be happy with my decision, I have to be happy with my process on how it was reached. This means that "in or lose" I take responsibility for my actions and therefore, the outcomes involved.

And of course, if I do lose, I will blame @mattclarke for dropping the link, @nealmcspadden as the shill, and @azircon for enabling me.

This is crypto.

Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]