I predicted Splinterlands.
I didn't know exactly that it would be called Splinterlands or that there would be Furious Chickens. In fact when I started paying Splinterlands in March, I wasn't even sure what I was looking at.
But still, I'm a nerd and spend way too much time thinking about where things are going and several years back, Splinterlands and games like it just made sense to me.
There's a fact I find a lot of my friends with kids don't seem to like to hear. The world is changing.
We are coming into a time when jobs are filled with unnecessary busy work we give to people out of habit. A time when ownership of traditional resources will lose their importance and might even get a mob at your front door. When human labor is no longer needed for things like building a house or creating food and no one will be employed to buy it anyway so questions will start in about why anyone needs to own it.
Humans will go to our baser instincts. We will socialize, we will seek out entertainment, and we will find ways to show off and try to be better than everyone else within the space we are given. And that means games. It means collecting. It means having a rare item your friend doesn't have that lets you crush them.
A unique combination of all I just said above plus a community, a great roadmap, a real complex and growing economy, something to strive to get better at, an easy way to practice conspicuous consumption, a way to practice investing, and its fun.
A few weeks before Splinterlands really took off with the introduction of the rental market and SPS, I as screwing around with Upland-a real world monopoly like game that's barely a game as much as a way to collect properties- and I realized that since you could now sell your properties for real USD, my rent I was collecting on my $500 worth of properties was actually paying out a real world 20% interest. In a game!
That's when I realized my predictions had come true. In the US, there is no way to invest your money and get a fixed 20% interest. But you can in a game. And the reason you can is because its not just a financial system but a highly motivated group of people who all want to be the best and build the best collections even if the game itself is weak.
So when Splinterlands rental market opened and people started listing top cards at the floor of .1 and celebrating their huge 8% interest, I listed higher. I knew we weren't dealing with a banking system of optimizing profits but by a community of people who want to be the best and win and are willing to sink some cash in to do it. And here we are now where we aren't seeing 8% but in some cases thousands of percent apr %.
This would not be possible in the traditional world and my Wall street friends regularly tell me is a scam because they live in traditional finance but here it is and it will continue to be.
And this brings me to the point. Splinterlands and its 1000% returns is still a secret with its paltry 100k active users. The world of finance doesn't yet understand what's going on. They ae barely grasping bitcoin yet and games is still just a step too far. But games are where the real action will be.
And just think, you beat them to it.
Splinterlands is inevitable and I'm a buyer.
PS: Look this banner again. That's the home screen. The word status is supposed to be a heading to show the status of your account. But I'd argue it fits better as exactly what I'm talking about. Splinterlands is about battle, ownership, community, and ultimately status. And that is people wrapped up with a bow.
