My SPS Journey - Moving On

I am moving on with my SPS!

I have previously done a couple of posts, documenting my thoughts about views since my accumulation of SPS, via playing Splinterlands, conversion from HBD, and trading from Hive. You can find the posts here:

• 17 Jul 2024
• 2 Jun 2024
• 3 May 2024
• 18 Mar 2024
• 22 Feb 2024
• 11 Jan 2024
• 3 Dec 2023

As sentimental as it sounds, this is going to be my final post on my SPS journey. At the risk of being misunderstood, I thought I need to clarify that SPS and Splinterlands are two separate matters. I will still be playing Splinterlands and writing Splinterlands stuff, but my SPS journey ends here.

Over the past month, and the months leading up to this, so many developments have happened. Be it the failure to receive funding from the Hive proposal, to the payment required for the Wild Season Pass and unbounding of Soulbound cards, as well as many other decision points by the team, which I won't list them down one by one.

But in summary, I have lost my earlier conviction in the SPS token. And in response to that, I decided I ought to do something with my existing holdings, of which majority are sitting in deep losses (unfortunately). I can only say it was my bad judgment for having too much faith that things can be turned around.

Alright, let's do a final stocktake of my account.

At time of writing, I currently hold 22,763 SPS in the game and another 53 SPS on Hive Engine. Including another 2,200 SPS which I has just swapped, that's a total of 25,016 SPS.

If I call it my SPS portfolio, it's actually divided into 3 parts.

The Battle Tranche: 2,908 SPS

The first tranche, or the battle tranche, is obtained from playing Splinterlands. This includes rewards battle wins, brawls wins and the staking rewards that came along with this tranche. This tranche is meant to be more permanent given that SPS is required for the game rewards, and I also use it to fund all my SPS delegations to help new players (it's free with no conditions attached!!!).

The current total SPS in this tranche stands at 2,908, and it should continue to grow with time from the battle wins and participation in brawls.

Action Plan: Honestly, I haven't finalised what I wanted to do with this tranche. There is no "real" cost to this tranche apart from time and effort. Maybe I will keep this portion as a momento (if SPS goes to the moon), or maybe I will swap and cash out, which I have done so before.

The HBD Tranche: 20,908 SPS

The second tranche, or the HBD (Hive Dollar) tranche, was a deliberate decision to convert the HBD earned from posting to "invest" in SPS.

8 months ago, I decided to swap 600 HBD into 19,162 SPS because of my bullishness for the price of SPS. You can find this being mentioned in a few posts of mine. And this is kept and monitored separately from the SPS that I get from playing Splinterlands.

I quickly learnt that one can do many things to grow that amount of SPS. As shared in my previous posts, one can earn yield from staking SPS (to get SPS and VOUCHER) and renting out the SPS (to get DEC). Over the span of 7 months, from staking SPS and renting out staked SPS, I have accumulated a total of 1,746 SPS so far over these 7 months. With that, my initial purchase of 19,162 SPS has become 20,908 SPS.

Despite so, the current value of 20,908 SPS is nowhere near 600 HBD. In fact, it's only about 110 HBD. That's more than 80% loss even with a 9% yield over 7 months.

Action Plan: I have decided to unstake this tranche, because of my lack of conviction in the price of SPS going forward.

The Hive Tranche: 1,200 SPS

The third and final tranche, or the Hive tranche, was funded by from Hive. Like some players here, I do some trading of tokens on Hive Engine as a form of hobby and fun whenever I have a view on the price in the short to medium term.

When there are bargains on Hive Engine, I could use some of my liquid Hive to buy the SPS, and when the price is good, I do sell off for gains too. Of course, this tranche is not staked, and it's more for the purpose of trading. That said, the current price of SPS in Hive isn't that favourable and I don't see there is much room for trading given the constant decline in value too.

Action Plan: I have since swapped out this tranche of SPS, which explains the earlier point I mentioned.

Of course, no post about SPS can escape about looking at the price chart of SPS over the past year.

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Which of course brings me to the next point, what are the options available?

• Swap into Hive
  This seems like the first and more logical choice since Hive is the main token behind this blockchain. With about 20,000 SPS, that's close to 600 Hive at current prices. Even as Hive, I will need to consider whether to (1) stake as Hive Power for my own curation, (2) stake as Hive Power and delegate it out to earn passive APR, or (3) just hold it as liquid Hive for flexibility but with no return.

• Swap into HBD
  This seems like the second and "safer" choice, but that would mean an outright realising my loss on my capital of initial 600 HBD, which I am irrationally not keen to do so. Lol. Moreover the 20% APR for HBD Savings and since decreased to 15%, and with the existing value of about 110 HBD, I feel more inclined to take more risk to grow the small principal rather than getting 15% APR on a small base, which is not going to be too meaningful.

• Swap into SWAP.BTC/SWAP.ETH/other crypto tokens
  I did consider SWAP.BTC since Bitcoin is the most well known crypto worldwide. Of course, there are other crypto tokens available too, but I don't plan to diversify too much for this amount.

• Swap into selected Layer 2 tokens
  This is potentially the most risky option because Layer 2 tokens are known for their price declines over time (most of them), as well as liquidity issues, and even an amount of 600 Hive/110 HBD might be too much to buy in or sell out for a number of the tokens. But of course, with all the risks mentioned, this is also potentially the most rewarding option if executed well. The key would be the selection of tokens.

• Cash out
  Of course, if all else fails, there's always the option of the cashing out. However, with prices on the low side, I think it's better to keep it on the blockchain for now. While I might be swapping SPS at the low, I am getting the alternatives (be it Hive or something else) at the low too.

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Finally, I just want to reiterate what I have mentioned at the start. This is the end of my SPS journey because of my (lack of) conviction in the token, but it's not the end of my Splinterlands journey. I still find joy battling it out with friends in friendly battles, and doing guild brawls with guild mates. But from an "investment" perspective, it does not quite make sense to me. And since this was something which I started (and my readers might take note), I thought I should provide this final update (so that my readers are aware too) even though it's not a great decision as my hard earned HBD went down the drain, but we live and learn from our mistakes. With that, I will move on and shift to hopefully greener pastures.

Let me know if there are any options that I have missed out, and happy to hear views too!

Before I end, of course, I should always reiterate that this is not financial advice. This is just my personal viewpoint and one should ALWAYS do your own due diligence for anything you want to put your money in.

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If you are interested to sign up to play Splinterlands, my referral link is here.