Here's the thing about consolidation, it looks calm on the surface, but underneath there's a tension (not the good kind). It feels more like exhaustion of dealing with the crypto market the past week. SPS spent this past week trapped in a narrow range, bouncing between the same levels, with volume that couldn't convince anyone that something meaningful was building.
SPS Price Action: The Sideways Grind
Here's the daily breakdown:
SPS closed the week at $0.00652, up from $0.00630 on November 21st. That's a +3.6% gain if you're measuring from the weekly low, which is not too bad in theory.
The entire week played out inside a $0.00622--$0.00658 band. A very tight range and every time price approached the upper boundary around $0.00658--$0.00660, it got rejected. Not once or twice, every single attempt. On the downside, support around $0.00622--$0.00630 held twice. But the bounces have been weak and didn't push through resistance or build any momentum. To put it bluntly there's no trend here. This isn't a bullish consolidation pattern where price coils tighter before launching higher. This is the kind of action that frustrates both bulls and bears because nobody's winning.
Volume is still all over the place, ranging from $11k on November 26th to $48k on November 22nd. I don't know if it's a coingecko issue, but countless times the volume reported seems to be decent and price bounces off support and then the price does nothing. Market cap drifted slightly upward from $3.08M to $3.18M by week's end, but that's just following price action. There's no expansion in interest, no new capital flowing in. It's the same pool of liquidity rotating between the same levels.
Relief Rally With Fragile Foundations
The wider crypto market saw some relief this week. Bitcoin recovered to around $91.5K and Ethereum climbed back above $3K. Both are still well below their early-October highs, but at least the forced selling that dominated the month of November has paused. BlackRock's IBIT posted net outflows for the month, with over $2.2 billion exiting, marking its worst month on record. For smaller tokens like SPS, this environment is particularly challenging. When liquidity tightens across the board, altcoins feel it first. The fact that Bitcoin and Ethereum bounced didn't translate into strength for SPS. Nonetheless, Stablecoin expansion continues to accelerate with JPMorgan, Bank of America, Amazon, and Walmart evaluating their own stablecoin issuance. Industry analysts projected the stablecoin sector could hit $1 trillion in circulating supply within 12 months. Prediction markets also saw growth, with Polymarket expanding U.S. access and Coinbase is reportedly developing its own version as well.
What Matters Next Week
Only two SPS levels matter right now:
- Break above $0.00662: This would open a path toward $0.00680, but only if volume expands. Without volume confirmation, any move above resistance is likely to fail quickly.
- Break below $0.00622: This exposes the next liquidity range around $0.006. If support cracks, and we could see another leg down.
The most likely scenario is continuation of the same narrow range. My personal take is that SPS price is trapped in a tight range with declining volatility. Even though the broader crypto market saw some relief the past week, this didn't translate meaningfully to SPS. I have previously flagged, the lack of correlation of the broader crypto movement to SPS price movement.
The frustrating part is the splinterlands dev team continues to pump out updates to the splinterlands game and these updates haven't trickled down to SPS price appreciation. SPS needs either a catalyst, significant game adoption, a major partnership, or a broader crypto market breakout. Right now, we have neither. We're stuck in a holding pattern, waiting for something to shift. If you're long-term on Splinterlands (and I know many of you are), this is probably one of those periods where you just keep building your collection, keep playing, and stop checking price every day. The game is healthy, but the SPS token is on a continuous downward spiral and therefore I expect SPS to stay range bound.
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