Should I be buying SPS to keep in my Splinterlands league?

THIS IS NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE, but it is a question that you should probably be asking yourself.

It wasn't that long ago that @aftersound asked the question: are any of you buying SPS? or something to that effect. He went on to talk about the general lack of utility for the token and talked about how the value of SPS was basically in free fall. At the time I was keeping my staked rewards staked and selling the rewards that I was getting for staked SPS to buy cards.

Not long after @aftersound asked that question our Splinterlands team came out with an announcement that the leagues we're able to play in will be restricted by how much SPS we have staked instead of the card power in our collection.

I've spent the bulk of my time in Silver 1 for the past year but recently started dipping my toes in the gold pool. The rewards are small, but that's all my deck is built for. I've started to level a few of my cards up but many of my cards are still at level 1.

I've had anxiety about the new SPS restrictions because the only place where I've seen SPS restrictions have been in events hosted by @sps.tournaments . Those have been the most official looking tournaments that I've come across. The SPS restrictions on those events have generally kept me from participating and I hope that the new SPS gates for ranked play don't keep me from my lowly silver league play, with a little luck I may even get to move into gold more permanently.

At the time that I wrote the bulk of this post. Summoner's Novice Beginner Training requires 600 SPS staked which is about $18 with SPS at 3 cents.

Silvershield Academy Beginner Training requires 2,362 SPS staked which is $70.86

Archipelago Modern Bronze Invitational requires 2,370 SPS staked which is $71.10

Victor's Modern Gold Invitational requires 9,051 SPS staked which is $271.53

Modern Wealthy Gambit requires 46,762 SPS staked which is $1,402.86

League of Champions requires 48,985 SPS staked which is $1,469.55

Ninhelm Wild Gold GF Invitational requires 67,833 SPS staked which is $2,034.99

600 SPS just to play as a novice may be pretty restrictive. It's interesting that Silvershield Academy Beginner Training requires slightly less than the Archipelago Modern Bronze Invitational. This makes me think that the 2,362 or 2,370 area could be a cutoff for Bronze 1 or Silver 3 league play.

9,051 SPS might be a cutoff for Silver 1 or Gold 3.

The 46-48k SPS cutoff looks like it might be a cutoff for Diamond or Champion league play.

I don't know what to make out of these cutoffs and I don't know if they will have any impact on the new cutoffs when they come out. SPS recently had a couple of brief drops near 2 cents but seems to be holding closer to 3 cents for the past month or so.

Recently we've seen a couple of nice catalysts for the price of SPS. Splinterlands announced their plans to gate the various leagues based on staked SPS and more recently the new Vruz Promo card was released. We may never have a cheaper opportunity to buy.

When the formal cutoffs are announced it could be more lax than the tournaments by @sps.tournaments would imply in which case most people will just breathe a sigh of relief. If the numbers used by @sps.tournaments end up aligning with the formal cutoffs or if the new cutoffs are even higher then I expect it to be an even bigger catalyst for the price of SPS and we may see some price appreciation from that.

I'm hopeful that Splinterlands can find the right balance when they make their announcement.

I jumped into Splinterlands over a year ago. It was November 2021 when the last crypto bull run was at it's peak. I gradually moved 90+% of my crypto holdings into the game over that first month or 2 and had no idea what I was doing. I bought up cards, I bought up SPS. I bought up credits. I bought up packs. The value of those things have generally decreased since I bought in, but I enjoy the game, so I keep playing and I reinvest all of the rewards that I get along with the payouts on my PeakD posts into cards. Recently I've started trying to balance my reinvestement between SPS and cards. The SPS that I've bought recently is a pretty great bargain compared to the SPS that I bought in 2021.

If the new cutoffs are high or low I feel good about the SPS that I'm buying now. In tournament play the higher SPS cutoffs correlate with higher prizes and I think it may be beneficial to buy up more SPS early on instead of waiting for the official announcements. If the new cutoffs are higher than you hoped for then you may end up pricing yourself out by waiting too long.

I hope this post has been helpful and informative. Thanks for reading and thanks for all the upvotes, reblogs, comments and follows. I'll see you in the game. If you're interested in starting your own Splinterlands adventure feel free to use my affiliate link to get started https://splinterlands.com?ref=jingo-submo PeakD is a terrific site for learning more about the game and the market.