In a predictable sequence, the price of SPS token has been rising to the occasion. This is something I had predicted in this post and talked about a long time before the countdown to the sale of validator licenses even came into the conversation.
At the time of writing, SPS token is trading at 11 cents and odds are in favour of even more push. I'm trying not to get ahead of myself due to my optimism about Splinterlands as a whole but this is looking very promising.
It is fascinating how enthusiasm tends to run through the entire Splinterlands ecosystem. It is almost as if the entire ecosystem reacts to any positive move and then moves along with the news.
For example, while the sale of validator licenses does not even have any direct implication on the NFT monster market, card values have been pumping. This is particularly the case with Untamed, Beta and other monsters from the older editions.
In this first round of sales or the presale, as it is officially called, vouchers will be part of the deal. This has translated to vouchers experiencing its own pump for good measure.
Predicting how high SPS can go during the sale of validator licenses might be a difficult task for me due to a mix of optimis and personal conviction about the game that clouds my judgement.
My prediction will offer a result that's conflicted because I doubt it will be in touch with reality. However, I'll apply some pragmatism in my approach.
At the time of writing, there are only a couple of hours until the start of the sales. Looking at the pace at which SPS has risen up to this point, initially starting at around 8 cents and now settling at 11 cents, I don't think there'll be any monumental jump coming soon.
I think a pragmatic range will be somewhere in the region of 15-20 cents. This prediction is based on the pace at which SPS has pumped in the past days that coincides with the countdown being added to the Splinterlands shop.
Note that there will be 2000 validators available in this round of sale that involves SPS and vouchers combined. In subsequent sales, the validator licenses will become more expensive and require more SPS tokens.
My prediction is solely for this first round of validator license sales. Considering the price of each validator, I don't think there will be a rush like we see in packs. However, I believe that we'll a decent number will be scooped off the market in this round of sale.
The sale is designed to spur investors to buy validator licenses at their earliest convenience. So while there won't be a rush because most people can't afford it, the first round of presale will move pretty fast.
Investors will want to get it sorted out as early as possible because each subsequent round leads to an increase in the amount of SPS tokens you have to spend. Without considering the discount rate, Tranche 1 to Tranche 7 will require about $959 million of SPS tokens to be completely bought out.
The total market cap of SPS tokens is about $90m today, so that means assuming a mad rush for validators were to happen, we'd have to 10-12X from here to buy up all the licenses.
I think it is highly unlikely we'll see SPS running up that fast now because of the general state of the crypto market. Bitcoin has hovered in the $30K range for a while and investor morale is quite low these days.
In any case, SPS is shaping up to be a very ambitious token and if all goes well, it will be pretty huge in the coming years. This token could turn out to be a monster of an asset that brings more value to investors in the Splinterlands ecosystem.
