I thought I might have been late to the party, but thankfully I was home with enough time to secure a Splinterlands Node License - just the one.
The Presale sold out in about 11 minutes, but I suspect it would have gone a fair bit faster if it was possible to buy more than one at a time, as processing took a little while.
Done.
And, in those 11 minutes, over 18 million SPS was burned at approximately 9000 for each license.
And a couple hours later, around 300 more have been sold from the slightly higher priced Tranche 1, where assuming that each has been bought with the maximum amount of vouchers for discount, would burn 13900 each or, another 4.2 million SPS.
22 million SPS burned in a few hours, which is approximately 2.8% of the total supply - A significant amount!
I suspect that Tranche 1 won't actually last too long overall, as the price isn't significantly higher and as SPS has been quite low recently, people likely stocked up in preparation. Those with higher stake are also getting daily Vouchers at a significant rate, so in the coming days and weeks, the remaining 2700 might be driven down.
Tranche 2 however hikes the price from 3000 to 5000, and it could be that people are starting to run out of their cheap SPS and will be a little more conservative in their buying. But if they are getting vouchers, they will still get a 50% "discount", so might be willing to burn $2500 worth of SPS.
At current prices, the remaining 2700 of Tranche 1 would burn an additional 37,5 million SPS, so at the end of that phase, there will be around about 6% of the total current supply gone. That is significant, especially since it is "free floating" SPS that people are willing to spend, rather than stake. This can reduce liquid supplies quite a lot, because while it is 6% of the total supply, it is over 16% of the liquid supply and, I think a lot of that "liquid" is actually paired in pools around the place while the airdrop continues.
At the point the drop ends, a lot of that liquid is either going to hit the market or, get dumped into stake. for a return. This decreases the return for stake as well as the share of the 20,000 daily vouchers, which means that vouchers from stake get harder to come by, at a time where vouchers are needed for the discounts. However, with the 20,000 daily added to be shared amongst node operators and dropped "per license" - assuming that all are running, that is 4 a day per license.
For Tranche 2, there is a $5 discount per voucher, so if in demand, there could be a significant price to them (currently 1.75). However, assuming that there are those willing to buy who are also earning vouchers, the demand might not strong enough to soak up all the sellers who don't want more licenses.
Obviously though, the higher the price of SPS gets, the more expensive the licenses already sold become and, the cheaper the future licenses are. For example, the presale price of SPS was around $0.11, so 9000 SPS were needed to be worth 1000. If price of SPS doubles to $0.22, that becomes $2000. However, it also means that the price of Tranche 2 at $2500 (assuming 500 vouchers used), will take 11,300 SPS. This means that it is 250% more expensive in dollars, but only about 25% more expensive in terms of SPS expenditure. This changes the dynamic, because it means more people can "earn" more of their buy in through the drop in the coming days. This can be demand on the vouchers available. But, even if the price quadruples to 44 cents and drops the SPS needed to 5500ish, there are 5000 licenses in that Tranche, so if all sold, it would be another 27.5 million burned.
Things get interesting too at this point, because there is less supply in the markets as the drop to the investors has ended and the cheap SPS is drying up, making it harder to get. This will make people think about what they hold and what they are willing to spend it on, making holders less likely to sell. This slows down the sale of licenses, even though the price of SPS might be increasing.
44 cents.
It doesn't seem too far fetched under the right conditions and I am taking the gamble that those right conditions will be met. And, since I am not the only one gambling on this, it also makes it more likely it will be met, as people will not want to sell low when they are expecting significantly higher prices.
Factor in other developments, opportunities and incentives, and the Splinterlands ecosystem gets quite dynamic, making human behavior harder to predict. One thing is very predictable though and that is, people will do what they think will provide them the value they seek.
Based on what people do though, it does often make me question the value they seek.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
