image source is the WAX website
Hey Steemerinos! RadDog here,
I've been preoccupied with a few things in the world and my own life and haven't really had anything good to post lately(especially compared to some of the great stuff thats on here).
I've been feeling low-energy, just been dealin' with it and moving along, my pineal gland must be encrusted extra bad lately but I've been checking in and looking at, enjoying and up-voting content regularly here and that being said, I'm back and plan on participating more in the future.
If you follow me you may remember that I mentioned that I was making a small speculative investment in the WAX "Gamer Exclusive" presale ICO.
As a guy who is "too old for video games" but still plays and as someone who got into cryptocurrency by-way of trading unwanted yet valuable video game skins I feel I have a perspective on this subject that might be of some value so I decided to make a post about it.
I received my tokens just before the new year and am pretty happy about it and wanted to make a little update about my experience so far.
WAX apparently had some issues with KYI (Know Your Investor) and was delayed in delivering the tokens but they still got them out before their December 29th deadline.
Another interesting development was that WAX decided to 10x the total supply of the tokens, their stated reason was to increase liquidity of the tokens.
This meant that ICO participants got 10x the amount of tokens they were originally going to receive.
At first I wondered if the increased supply would make the token look less attractive to non ICO buyers and hurt the overall profits of ICO participants. I guess we will never know for sure but for now WAX is ahead.
So 300 WAX/1 ETH became 3000 WAX - 1 ETH.
Wax is (at this moment) valued at $1.75 USD/0.00011377 BTC after holding steady between $0.77 and $1.10 since its launch, currently up over 50% from yesterday which makes ICO and Gamer-Exclusive presale participants roughly a 15x gain, which is about 3x the gain one would have made from just hodling ETH as of right now but I expect it to fluctuate both ways.
To be in the first presale you had to deposit a MINIMUM of 167 ETH which at the time was about $50,000 and you got 3000 WAX per 1 ETH, the gamer exclusive presale was the same; 3000 WAX-1 ETH but you could only participate if you had an existing OPSKINS account at the time of the announcement and there was a minimum investment of 1 ETH.
The actual ICO paid 1500 WAX-1 ETH.
WAX is currently only being traded on Huobi and Bancor network. I am not familiar with Bancor yet as I have not had time to look into it but Huobi is a South Korean exchange that I understand can be problematic to withdraw from if you don't live in South Korea so I hope to see it listed on a Bittrex or a Binance or even an EtherDelta at some point.
In any case I plan to hold this one and see where it goes.
Experimenting with WAX token:
On OPSKINS, (a site for selling and buying in-game cosmetic items for several games and now crypto kitties) you can now buy with and be paid in WAX in addition to BTC, ETH, and USD.
I am not really into virtual items in the games I play but I have owned and traded them for the fun and profit of it .
(pictured is an example of a totally silly virtual item from a game I never played but think is amusing)
There was a game (not tea party simulator,lol) I had been thinking of buying on the STEAM gaming platform and thought I would use this as an opportunity to send some WAX and see how it works.
In addition to using a credit card or a pre-paid card to buy games on STEAM, you can sell your virtual items on their marketplace but the money you get there can only be spent there on other items or games and can't be withdrawn.
In addition, they charge a rather steep 15% on your item that comes out of what you sell it for.
In contrast on OPskins, it's something like 5% also, people price their items on OPskins on average about 15% lower that the STEAM marketplace to offset that 15% cut and in many cases they offer items at a steep discount below that because they just want money for something and don't want to wait , (it's like shorting a coin) which will show up as "on sale" and can be filtered for in a search.
Knowing this, I searched for items that were on sale that had enough volume on STEAM so I knew it would sell quickly there so I didn't have to wait too long.
I deposited a little WAX to OPskins from my Ethereum wallet and it went through very quickly, I'd say under 3 minutes, which surprised me very much seeing how ETH has been so slow lately.
Then I bought the on-sale items, sent them to my STEAM account , put them up for sale there, checked back about an hour later and they had already sold, leaving me enough money on STEAM to buy the game I wanted.
I realize (and hope) I may well look back on that like a lesser version of the famous 10,000 BTC Pizza but it was a small-small bit of my hodlings and really just an experiment to see how smoothly WAX worked purely as a cryptocurrency.
I would have to say WAX worked flawlessly and with it's fluctuating value, it gives gamers another option when Bitcoin or ETH or USD for whatever reason are not ideal on a given day.
It also occurs to me that in a pinch one could use OPskins to cash their WAX into ETH, BTC or USD or the other way around.
WHAT I DON'T KNOW:
Wax will eventually (or maybe already does) allow users to create their own asset exchanges through Smart-Contracts and I am not knowledgeable enough to cover any of that yet, but I am paying attention to this and hopefully will be able to by the time that aspect comes to fruition.
Wax is also being used by the SALT lending platform in some capacity and that is on my short-list of things to research.
If you have any questions about WAX or OPSKINS or STEAM or if I need to clarify anything in my post, please let me know below.
-Thanks again for reading this and I really hope you're all having a great new year and enjoying the crypto-coaster we are all on together and that I wish you the best and want you to remember not to chase rainbows but MAKE rainbows, YOU are the gold at the end of your rainbow, I don't mean that in any cheesy way at all, I'm dead serious.
love you guys - @RADDOG
P.S. When I post here and talk about STEAM gaming platform, I like to clarify that my STEAM username is NOT RadDog, there are a couple people on STEAM named Rad Dog or some variant and none of them are me.
(on STEAM usernames are not unique and can be changed as many times and as often as you want and more than one person can have identical names)