It took 27 days to actively and passively accrue funds to buy my first Splinterlands Plot, but as of early this morning, mission accomplished!
While I could've bought this outright, the idea was to earn it, make adjustments, and appreciate the process. It'll mean more to me this way and potentially inspire others who were on the fence to set a goal and get it done. Most importantly, I learned some things during this process, and seemingly caught a decent price which gives me with leftover funds to play with. Planning pays.
Overall Summary:
USD Purchase Price: $616.59
Hive Spent: 403 HIVE
Days From Start Of Goal To Purchase: 27 Days
Expected minimum $800 cost - $616.59 actual = $183.41 discount.
Fund Sources:
126 WAIV Tokens Exchanged For 17 SWAP.HIVE
413.92 STEEM Exchanged For 117.2 SWAP.HIVE (Ouch)
127.4 HBD Exchanged For 81.55 HIVE > 80.73 SWAP.HIVE
I expected this process to take about 30 days and was fairly close.
Despite initial planning, SPS/DEC/Hive Punk Sales/Card Sales played no factor.
I didn't realize that I had 500 WAIV tokens staked from a past airdrop. I researched the project, but since its business ops are only in Canada right now, I unstaked. By the time I noticed these funds, only one-fourth were made liquid to swap for this exercise, but it all helps. Surprise funds!
The leftover STEEM from the fork I swapped was traded at a terrible rate, but it was a decent local rate on Hive's pullback, and I needed to pull the bandaid off.
127.4 HBD were my liquid blogging rewards since I announced my goal and allocated 100% of those towards the plot purchase. Hive ran hard during this time, but I swapped when the ratio was a passable 1.56 HBD/HIVE to ensure that I didn't get left in the dust on another price spike. THANK YOU so much to everyone who contributed to this amount here.
I wanted to hold my Splintertalk tokens, but needed to sell them at the end because I forgot about the 1% Hive-Engine deposit fees. I wasn't sure if the Plot price would fluctuate during the window I wanted strike my buy, so I wanted a few bucks of insurance.
After budgeting $20 of DeFi interest per day over this time with the expectation of the Plot price being $800-$850, I was actually over-budgeted here as the Plot price came down to near $600. When I saw this, I jumped on this process at 3:30 AM or so to try to sneak a buy order in while the market activity was slow.
I don't have an easy way to get my DeFi yield into Hive. It's clearly not impossible, but it takes several steps and extra time. If only @blocktrades would expand the trading pairs they offer include more layer 1 chains (throwing hope into the wind).
The Buy:
The asking price was initially 413.25 HIVE when I got all my funds situated and I set a buy order at 414 HIVE. Either a bot or another person immediately put a buy in at 415 and got filled within a few minutes, so I tried slightly lower since the market depth was thin. A few plots were plucked just above the 413.25 ASK, so I went down to 403 HIVE and decided to sleep on it. It seemed like the market was testing the $600 psychological mark, and I wanted to secure the buy without gambling too much on hoping for a possible breakdown below that level. To my surprise, it filled after about 30 minutes. After a sigh of relief that the job was finally done with some lessons learned, I texted @blewitt in the middle of the night to ask if buying this land he promoted hard would finally allow me to be his friend again. I hope I woke him.
While I could've just bought at the ASK at 463 HIVE ($92.40 more), I'd been patient for this long and wanted to ride that mantra until I got filled at the price I thought was attainable. Thankfully it worked out. If it goes lower in the short-term, it doesn't matter to me. I got my Plot and am now a 1/150,000 land owner for the long haul.
The chart looked like a good time to act. That red candle could've turned the price down more, or 400 HIVE is a support zone. It was too risky to gamble either way, so I met in the middle. While the price shows $612.56, I took this screenshot a few minutes after I bought at $616.59. It's all the same at this entry level.
That's me on the top. Since I was expecting to shell out $800+, I'm glad to have learned that the Plot price acted reasonably in USD terms during an overall crypto correction. Based on the price activity shown during the day, I got a good deal.
What's Next?
I have 34 extra SWAP.HIVE and 375 WAIV left that I didn't anticipate. I may put this towards packs, SPS, or a seed fund for a second Plot.
I don't know how useful just one Plot will be, so I'll likely accrue more DeFi yield in reserve to buy on any large dip from here. Instead of holding the yield natively with the risk of price volatility, I may adjust to UST at ~20% interest in the meantime as a productive stable coin fund route. I won't want to chase the price up if it runs, but if it holds or comes down, I won't be shy. I do have a few other non-Hive objectives I need to refocus on in the short term before I buy packs when voucher red tape requirements are lifted.
Land is relatively cheap in SPL as compared to other play-to-earn games with more exposure, even if they're brand new games. I'm not sure if it's practical to drop tons of ETH into that, but I'm warming up to the idea of other in-game NFTs that earn, or potentially a larger shocking step of a founder node. At some point, you have to be in it to win it, especially if passive income is in play. (what a pun)
Oh, and I get some more airdropped SPS that I'll continue to stake. Maybe I'll earn a full voucher in time as well, but it'll be simply to check a box versus any significant win.
Thanks again to those who gave my posts some extra boosts to help in this purchase. I understand that I spent the HBD, but I feel that I kept it in the HIVE ecosystem by putting the 127 HBD towards a digital asset that's on-chain.
@blocktrades would expand the trading pairs they offer include more layer 1 chains (throwing hope into the wind).
@steemmatt