For those who purchased a presale or Tranche 1 node (prior to June 8th) using vouchers, today marks a return of 100% of the vouchers that were used in the transaction!
The first payout, on June 8th, brought node holders 8.025 vouchers. That number has gradually dropped each day because every node purchased reduces the number of vouchers that are paid to each node. Which means that by today, each node holder received 6.234 vouchers. The sum total of vouchers earned for each node, assuming that it was held from day one of the payouts till now, exceeded 500 today (the actual figure is 503.823)! Therefore, anyone who used vouchers to reduce the price of their node, has now earned back 100% of the vouchers that they used!
Vouchers were only one half of the investment however. Pre-sale nodes were valued at $2,000 and the purchase could be made using all SPS or a combination of SPS and up to 500 vouchers. Each voucher used reduced the price by $2.00. Similarly, Tranche 1 nodes were valued at $3,000 of SPS and could be reduced in cost using up to 500 vouchers valued at $3.00/each.
SPS will eventually be paid out as well. Every owner will have used differing amounts of SPS because of its constant price fluctuation. SPS on the day of presale was valued at $.1002. So, the pre-sale node that I purchased cost 500 vouchers and 9,980 SPS. On day one of the payouts, SPS was valued at $.078. Today, its price is about $.065. So, while the price to purchase a node in Tranche 1 has not increased since the start of payouts, the number of SPS that it takes to buy one has.
It remains to be seen how quickly the number of SPS that owners earn back from each node will return the original number of SPS. If we began to receive SPS today, each node would pay out about 34.5 SPS. At that rate, it would take roughly ten months to return the number of SPS that were used for a presale node (longer for Tranche 1 nodes). Obviously, more nodes would be purchased during that 10 months, reducing individual node payouts, so it would start to take longer.
Now that node holders have all of these vouchers, what can be done with them? Today, the options are fairly limited. They can be sold for about $.49/each on Hive Engine. The team has also said that they can be used to purchase tickets to Splinterfest. And, they appear to be planning to use them for pre-sale Riftwatchers packs. They have also said that pre-sale purchases will be awarded a chance at an airdrop of a new promo card.
Riftwatcher packs will be sold for SPS. This would mean that anyone who did not have SPS, but wanted a pack in either the presale or regular sale would need to purchase SPS. For this reason, Riftwatchers by itself should put upward pressure on the price of both SPS and vouchers. If that is true, it is possible that that would have an effect on the sale of nodes as well.
Currently, as noted above, earning back the number of vouchers paid into a node purchase can happen fairly quickly. However, earning back the number of SPS may take quite a bit longer. And, with SPS valued at nearly half of what it was at presale, the number of SPS that it takes to purchase a node will mean that it will take quite a bit longer for someone to earn back the same number of SPS that they spend to purchase a node at today’s prices. For example, right now, it would take 23,600 SPS to purchase a node if one were to use 500 vouchers. If SPS were to return to the value that it held during pre-sale ($.10), then it would only take 15,000 SPS to purchase that same node.
Clearly, improvement in the price of SPS would make it much easier for more holders of SPS to purchase a node. It may also make it more desirable. It will be very interesting to see what effect the use of vouchers and SPS for Riftwatchers will have on the value of both of these tokens! Then it will be a struggle for node holders to have to decide between buying more nodes and buying Riftwatchers packs. What will you do?
