Steem Monsters Sunday!: A Path to Orca!

A fair warning to those that stay away from numbers today as I will going through a bunch of them as I have been crunching some interesting figures over the last two weeks as I began to realize how well my Steem Monsters Collection has been performing from a value perspective. While its performance against competition in both tournaments and the ranked playlist has been somewhat lagging this Season, my investment of time and resources has definitely paid off after seeing these figures. With a little over two days left in the Season, this will give me some time to reflect on my next moves not only on the Steem ecosystem but with Steem Monsters or Splinterlands.

Let me start by giving some perspective as I have been on Steem since December 2017 but did not start to invest resources in it until February 2018 when I deployed a Dollar Cost Averaging strategy. I have purchased Steem every month since then at least once which has allowed me to accumulate a stake of 20k Steem Power right now. I have bought much more but as you will soon see, I used some to invest in some projects and well as give back to the community for a number of initiatives. Over 2,600 Steem and 250 SBD has been put into the Steem Monsters game from my account! Therefore, it is by far my largest use of Steem or SBD in the ecosystem. This is despite my hoarding mentality when it comes to assets.

These figures do not include the $2,525 I also put into the game by buying Booster packs and participating in the original Kickstarter last year. Using the price of Steem at the time of purchasing cards, I calculate that the total amount invested in my Collection to be approximately $3,800! I remember starting with $10 for a starter pack and another $20 in Alpha Booster packs and thought I was crazy. However, I quickly went down the rabbit hole which got me to be a Monster Maverick by many standards! What is more crazy is that I incurred in material losses by using some of the Steem I had bought as high as $4 to buy these cards!

Given the continued demand for Splinterland cards due to the development of the game and the increase in player base over the last couple of months, the prices of cards have increased quite impressively despite the latest declines in cryptocurrency prices. This has taken my collection to not only being my best performing digital asset this year, but it now has my Collection being more valuable than my Stake in Steem Power and currencies! In fact, with current Steem prices, my collection could more than double my Steem Power and get me very close to achieving my goal of becoming an Orca as it could add about 23k Steem Power! I may start tracking these statistics more closely as I am willing to do anything to get to be an Orca!

Unfortunately, this has given me some additional perspectives on how harsh my stake in Steem has been from a performance perspective as I have achieved a cost average for my Steem at $0.70 but given the 20k I have, it makes my losses look pretty bad at these prices! In addition, in looking at the over 2,600 Steem spent for cards, I now calculated a realized loss of over $3,700 to get that collection! It makes me think about how bad this ride has been for those of us that believe in the ecosystem but it also demonstrates the potential successes that can come if we see what Splinterlands has been able to achieve. Also, much like like typical engagement on Steem as a social network, I have enjoyed the time engaged and the experiences shared with the community while playing and those are considerations that we cannot put a tangible value too.

This reflection also gets me thinking about the next steps of these journeys within the ecosystems Steem is creating for the community. The passion of the community continues to demonstrate how technology can be leveraged to create value despite continued headwinds in the general cryptocurrency markets. The way I see it is that I could even potentially go all into the game and move more Steem and SBD into my Collection as I am still probably over $1,000 away from maximizes my Collection at these prices. However, I can also sell most of my collection to get closer to my Orca goal! However, I always like to take a measured and diversified approach to continue this journey to enjoy it along the way. While I am still weighing my options, I think the immediate thought is to not miss the opportunity and invest in some unopened Beta Booster packs as they will soon sell out!