After my second 2 hour phone chat with 
As a funny aside, he was pissed because he didn't think he got any good Hive Punks, but I explained that a rarity of 886 was excellent, and not 886/10,000. Oh, Chris... This is who I'm taking advice from. Haha.
As is always the case, I want to earn what I buy. It's more fun and meaningful that way. This also keeps me relatively low-risk, since I'm not swapping stuff around to juggle opportunity cost.
My starting point is 0 HIVE and 0 HBD. Cool.
This decision is not the best timing as I'd also like to get more Hive Punks, but as I've come to enjoy the Splinterlands game/economy, the reality is that I have 22 punks and 0 plots. I have to get a plot to check that box, whether the price soars or plummets from here. I need to secure one and can buy any dips in the future.
While land feels expensive, apparently it's going to be a vital part of the future of the game and there are only 150,000 in existence. I originally thought there were 100,000 plots based on Hive-Engine, but that's apparently incorrect. While 1 plot may not be extremely useful down the line, I'll be able to likely join forces with other land owners in a supportive manner.
The catch is that I have 0 liquid HIVE at the moment and need to start from scratch. I refuse to sell crypto for it, so I will earn it. The current rate is in the 850 HIVE ballpark, so I better get going.
While I have other goals for topping off on coins with my passive income yields, I may need to siphon some towards Splinterlands. However, I'll first see what I can muster from other resources at hand.
The Battle Plan For 850 HIVE (currently $753.70):
Proof of ground floor:
Purchase Power Sources:
I recently forgot that I had Steem on my old account, so I'm powering that down. I already sent one set to Splinterlands to get some basic collection power of 1,000 for my second account I just started, but will redirect. My first season chest there got me a Djinn Renova at $3.90, and I'm earning DEC now, so I'm on the comeback trail there. STEEM>HIVE is a swap I'll make any day since I don't associate that with my core holdings at all. I'll leave 25 STEEM powered up, leaving me with ~425 STEEM to carry over, worth roughly $250 and 29.4% of the Plot right there.
I'll try to sell two of my most basic Hive Punks for 82.8 HIVE total after the fees. I prices them pretty low at 44.5 and 47.5 HIVE to turn them over for roughly 2x profit, which will both cover one of the 4 punks I bought on the market yesterday, and give me another 9.7% towards my Plot. I don't want to sell my other Punks for now.
Claiming pending rewards of 6.948 HBD now to officially get the ball rolling. I might not swap this for HIVE immediately since it's pumped a bit lately. I'll start blogging a bit more often to keep building towards this brick by brick. If I swapped the HBD now, I'd get 7.824 HIVE, which is a 0.9% or almost 1% of the Plot.
Let's check the tallies so far, I'm roughly 31% there. Not too bad for a probable ground floor.
Blogging for land. Let's assume that I get 3 Liquid HIVE/Day after HBD swaps for 25 of the next 30 days (since I had a small gap in posts), that'll be 75 HIVE and another 8.8% to goal, getting up to 41.6% net. Maybe that's low to expect, but I don't get many whale votes outside of those who curate my recycling posts and want to stay realistic.
Next we have DEC I can earn via Splinterlands game play. I currently have ~$10 in DEC on my main account and early around 2.5-3.5 cents per victory. I'll try to use more promo and gold cards to boost this, but I'd assume that I'd make another $20 tops in this timeline if I just do the daily quests and a few more for fun. Adding $30 on DEC in here is another 3.5% towards the prize. I won't include my second account for now since it's earning less per battle and I'm not going to count pennies too much here, just dollars!
SPS airdrop earnings. I'm currently getting about 0.53 SPS and 0.146 SPS airdropped daily for 0.684 SPS. Instead of staking this, I'll probably try to accumulate this to sell towards the Plot. Thirty days of accumulation will be a paltry 20.52 SPS, worth a projected $10, or 1.2%. Every little bit counts.
Here are the current liquid in-game funds for my starting point:
The checkpoint is now at 44.6%, or $379.95 accounted for. Nearing halfway there. Now where the F is the rest going to come from?
Should I sell some Splinterlands cards? My owned cards are currently worth $545.66 and $98.81, but I don't really want to sell those for various in-game reasons. I probably won't unless I get a reward that I really don't need. This Plot goal will also slow me down on buying cards, but so be it. I think I'm set for now for casual enjoyment/earning.
- The final piece of the puzzle, using a portion of my DeFi yield. I hesitate to do this since I prefer to compound and farm at APRs well over 100% for the bulk, but I need to sacrifice some opportunity cost for this. It also reduces the pending airdrop snapshot benefits I'll get on those chains, but I'll take the hit for now. I've been topping off on a few key coins in this respect for a while, nearing many goals I've previously set for myself. Once hit, I'll free up that interest to bring over into the Plot fund. While I could easily swap coins and buy plots, I won't. Using new yield will be the only way I'll allow this. To not take it too far and to appreciate the process, I think I originally thought of $30 worth/day. This will require a few swaps to do through Blocktrades at the end, so I'll let this pool to swap when ratios are ideal. Needing $470.05/$30 will take me 15.68 days to get the balance, so that might be too fast when compared to other timelines. I'll settle on $20/day to enjoy the process and let the other sources pan out. This will allow the difference to be filled in just under 23.5 days. That's fair enough. If anything surprising happens, and a stream is boosted, perhaps I'll start on the second Plot.
So there it is. My roadmap is set. I should have a plot within 30 days as long as Blewitt doesn't keep buying them all to jack the price up. He'll also let me be his friend again, which is most important. Life will be back to normal soon.
After this, the next mission will be accumulating funds for packs. While I'm factoring in my small SPS and DEC above, they're negligible for getting vouchers for packs. I'll either need to ramp up the DeFi yield into DEC for Vouchers, or just hope to get packs after the 2-voucher round is done. As a failsafe, I can also just buy packs on Hive-Engine for a premium to save all the voucher earning hassle. Advice on strategy for this is very welcome here. I've only gotten one Beta pack before as a prize from a contest, so I have no experience with buying packs.
*Please let the price hold or drop. I'll commit to the plot, but would not be eager to keep accumulating funds to chase a price spike if the timing works out that way. If there is a spike, I'll make Blewitt give me one at 850 HIVE since it'll be all his fault. Please sign here: ____________.
Again, the prize is in sight. I won't give up coins I've held for years for this good faith buy because I want the risk to be as minimal as possible. It'll then make the land that much more worth it to me.
Progress updates to follow, and thanks to anyone who can give a boost along the way.
