Splinterlands | SPS Price Prediction...

I'm having a look at the SPS price action this week in Splinterlands as from the looks of it, the recent pump which caused some hype has been rejected. This is where I most likely see it go in the near and long future...


The Recent Price Pump Explained

So basically with the pre-sale of Conclave Arcana, players who wanted to buy in needed DEC to do so which could be bought off the market at a discount price as around 50 days ago it was trading around 0.007$ which gives a 30% Discount. It looks like it was bought up to around 0.00097$ but it never went to the point where the Flywheel was activated.

DEC Price Chart

What happened more I believe is that existing players bought SPS anticipating that the price would go up with an eye on a successful pre-sale which might activate the flywheel. Some on them likely did it with an eye to burn at higher prices to get more DEC but with the price of DEC below Peg it was more profitable to dump the SPS on the market intsead.

SPS rallied from 0.006$ up to 0.01448$ (+127%) in about 10 days of upside before it started to come down again to 0.01$ (-31%)


Pre-Sale Dissapointment ?

From what I understand, there is a 20-day period for the pre-sale with a maximum of 500k Standard Packs, 100k Alchemy packs & 50k Legendary Packs. So far 82769 Standard packs (331k Dollars) | 36401 Alchemy Packs (437k Dollars) | 7943 Legendary Packs (191k Dollars) have been sold with 15 days left to go in the pre-sale. While that adds up to close to 1 Million Dollars worth of DEC that was burned, it still feels like rather low sales.

The reality feels like there is a core Splinterlands player base which includes some whales who are willing to buy in but with each new set this seems to be shrinking and no new players are coming into the ecosystem at least yet.

The top 7 Buyers in total equal roughly 25% of the total sales volume.


Where Things go Next ?

I would say there are positives and negatives. on the bright side, many existing players still are willing to unload which already brought in quite some revenue and with no more DEC created out of thin air by the team, it's only a matter of time before the flywheel to kick in. This most likely will come from the team who receive money from players who buy credits and need enough DEC to back that up. Once they run out of supply they likely will start buying SPS off the market and burn it. The good thing also is that there was no crazy 'scam pump' of SPS only for it to be used to briefly mint a ton of DEC before crashing down again. The lower SPS goes the more that will need to be burned when the eventually flywheel kicks in which is a good thing long-term.

However, many questions remain as all other asset values are more or less connected to SPS.

  • Lower SPS price means lower rewards, means lower returns of Cards which makes their prices drop.
  • Chaos Legion will soon Rotate out of Modern at it needs to be seen what many of those players will do as Wild returns are very limited and Survival isn't for everyone.
  • The 33% Extra Inflation of Survival Mode is also a thing which won't help the price of SPS and a way needs to be found to also make that sustainable.
  • Modern Rewards likely will be a lot higher once all the Chaos Legion players are forced out but this might cause a repricing of SPS to the downside as players try to earn back their Conclave Arcana investment.
  • Existing Players already have enough Staked SPS at least most of them I would say so there is less need to keep what they earn let alone buy more of it.

New Players Are Needed

Basically, that is all it comes down to as the game only can 'hold up' so long on existing players who keep pumping money into the ecosystem. So far I still see no real selling point for new players to come in. One of them would be a price increase of SPS which makes earnings in Modern great so it's a 'good investment' to buy packs and start playing. However, the need to also hold SPS and the fact that there is no real way to come into Splinterlands as an occasional recreational player is a major downside. Splinterlands remains a game where you need to be full-time engaged for it to be worth it which limits the player base massively.

The 3-month chart of new players coming in is quite sad with only 242 spellbook sold. This is where all the focus should go to while right now everything continues to resolve around getting more sales from existing players.


SPS Price Prediction

-> Short Term
I see both upside factors and Downside factors so I would say a relatively stable price around 0.01$ feels like the most likely case for SPS. For it to go up I would say that a new adoption wave needs to happen which will not be easy.

-> Long Term
Splinterlands remains one of the best Crypto games out there and it survived a lot of storms so far with no outlook for things to be shut down. We have come a long way and the core infrastructure of the game along with the Flywheel tokenomics are not bad. So I still expect that SPS is an investment right now which can be made at the current price that has quite some long-term upside potential. If anything, all value should get directed into SPS and especially if they manage to get new players in it can go quickly. They will need to have SPS staked and buy cards which both highly benefits the price of SPS.

Conclusion!

The recent price pump was nothing more that players speculating that the price would go up and the flywheel possibly getting activated with the pre-sale of Conclave Arcana. However, the only thing the game needs is new players and they simply are not coming in just yet. However, I remain hopeful about the future as there really is a fun game with Splinterlands.


Posted Using INLEO



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8 comments
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Excellent analysis! I am a bit more bullish than you, but I agree with everything you said.

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Great analysis, I think you covered all the bases there. Maybe Splinterlands gets lucky and manages to get some new players in with the final year of the current bull cycle and it is enough to get it through the upcoming bear year for bitcoin where ALTs will all be repriced lower. What will happen to Hive during this time could also impact the game.

Although the Concave packs are 1000DEC lower than Rebellion, they are still massively overpriced imo compared to the lack of hype and for non-whale players considering they removed all the leagues. A max level deck under $1k should have been a more realistic target imo to keep Chaos players in modern.

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The pack prices and a lack of easy way for new players to come in is indeed a massive problem still. This while it should be easy to fix if they just take a step away from the extreme pay2win mechanics.

I get it though, as long as existing players are willing to throw money at it to get an edge it's the easy route to take from the devs point of view even though they continue to shout that 'new players are top priority'.

I guess one of the key questions is if existing players are willing to recommend the game to others which for me now is just not the case and I plan to write why exactly next week.

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Very true. If some people are prepared to throw $1m at it still, why change anything?! It's working.. 😂

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Good point and interesting approach. We do need all those new players somehow.

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Indeed and right now I still don't see how they will manage that as everything still seems to resolve around extracting more money from existing players.

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