We are pretty close to having the first full week of 2026 in the books and to say it has been busy would be an understatement. I think there was one night this past week that I didn't have something going on after work. I made some big moves with my Splinterlands land plots that I will get to in a little bit. I also had a couple doctor appointments which went well, but since we are in the new year, all of our deductibles have reset, so things are quite expensive.
Crypto has been doing typically crypto things. I'll also get to more of that in a second, but it is nice to see BTC over $90K again. Even if it is only briefly. There was a point where it looked like it was heading back towards $100K. Oh well, it will get back there eventually.
Travala
Since we are in a new quarter, the new SMART Bonus rewards for people to choose to complete a few tasks are available on Travala. I was introduced to Travala a cycle or two ago by someone here on HIVE. It is your typical travel site, but you can pay with and earn crypto for booking through it. It's a pretty cool idea, and I think it has a lot of staying power. I bought a bunch of tokens when they were much more expensive than they are now and locked them up in the staking program.
With the tasks I earn about 100 of the tokens each quarter. It's not a ton, but if the token price goes back up, it could equal a nice trip somewhere four times a year.
Splinterlands
As I mentioned, I did a little bit of changing to the six or seven plots that I own in Splinterlands. I pulled all my cards off of them and then waited for the three day cooldown to expire. After that was finished, I went into PeakMonsters and used the "auto" button to add cards back to my plots.
The image above is from the https://land.spl-stats.com/player-overview/overview site, and it shows what my production looked like before I made the changes. As you can see, I was at a net negative 1.05 DEC. Special thanks to 
As you can see, after making the changes, my plots are in a much better position now. I am earning a net positive 2.90 DEC and while I still have a few areas that are negative grain due to only having wood plots, I was able to increase my grain production by over 100, so that I hopefully will be able to cover the costs of those wood plots.
If the prices ever recover, I might actually sell those two wood plots since the plots in the other region are earning both grain and wood.
If you haven't voted for my SPS Validator Node yet, please head over to PeakMonsters and consider it.
HIVE Birthday
I got a message in the system the other day that I had hit my 8th year on HIVE. It's funny because it feels like it hasn't been that long, but it also feels like I have been here forever. Not quite as long as some folks, but still for quite a long time. I've been lucky enough to see a lot of changes and growth in the platform in that time.
I can't wait to see what the next 8 years brings for HIVE!
Silver
I wanted to take a minute to share another one of the pieces of silver that I picked up from 
This is another round in the Legendary Warriors series. It highlights Joan of Arc and I think it turned out really well. I notice that I didn't do the best job with my focus, and the plastic is a bit scratched, but the round is in great shape. You can tell these pieces were well taken care of before they found their way into my hands.
CHEX
It's been quite some time since I posted about one of the alts that I jumped into a while ago. I've just been sitting on my tokens waiting for something to happen and sadly, so far the only thing that has happened is the price has gone down. After seeing a meteoric rise, the token now sits down near where I originally bought in at, but hopefully that is all changing.
I can't find the original post from last night, but this post on X is pretty close. The original post had some good information about token supply shock given their recent collaboration with the nation of Maluku worth 28 billion when you factor in the resource rights.
The price of the token has already doubled overnight, but I don't plan on doing anything until the token tops at least $1. If it ever gets there. We have a long way to go from here, but with all the connections and regulatory approvals Chintai already has, I think it isn't out of the question.
As always, this is not financial advice!
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All pictures/screenshots taken by myself or 