[IMAGE: https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmXtMfYR6FntLcpTLSfJ2ynkZJRCQbdRDd46Utbk5nhEw9/image.png]
I may have just created an actually pegged asset... Can we just shoot the shit for a second on Monster Backed Dollars?
What am I talking about?
Ok, I've joked about creating Aggroed Backed Dollars. It would be a commodity that would live on the blockchain and always represent exactly $1. We can't do that with SBDs at this point because there are a lot of variables in the system and shit is super complicated. There has been some debate over the reverse conversion, but it isn't pretty. There isn't a clear consensus on what to do with it. People want a stable currency because it's good for merchants. Bloggers want a high SBD because it's good for post payouts. Investors want a stable currency that sometimes spikes like crazy. There are multiple stake holder groups and they want different shit.
So, it's ugly, and the fate of SBDs are unclear.
Steem Monsters
I created Steem Monsters with @yabapmatt to just have a game... we thought this thing would do well. We had no idea it would explode like this. Yaba says he thought it might happen... I did too, but not alpha, and surely not before the intro post closed. We're nearing $30k USD! This is fucking unreal.
So, I'm going to increase the price per starter kit. I don't know when. I'm not in a rush. Probably after each major milestone I'll increase the price. So, next major one is auction house... when that's ready I'll up it. But the booster packs I have zero intention of raising the price on any time soon. $2 is fair. I'm not here to overcharge... but if that's a stable price point then there's some stuff we can do with it.
MBD
Let's say we open up the option to buy a large volume of packs. Maybe put in a discount to sweeten it some. Price of Steem spikes and you want to take it out of volatile steem, but you don't want to put it in SBD because that's volatile too, and you don't want to move it into an exchange because you're gonna lose some anonymity, and you don't want to cash it out to USD using coinbase because you're worried about tax implications... Maybe you're willing to use tether and Bittrex, but you also have some concerns about that.
Just hear me out for a second. We're building an auction house. What if you could buy 20k packs at a discount. Then you could hodl them when the price of steem is high, sell them when it's low, and now you basically have a hedge against fluctuating prices. Let's assume some buyers dried up... you could start unpacking the cards and buying and selling legendaries etc. You probably wouldn't want to do that for 20k packs... but it could theoretically be an option. The fact that we'd be making bank on cards would allow us to pump tournament payouts through the roof and that would keep demand for cards and the game quite high.
Packs become the new $2 bill. I'm just spit ballin' here. But if we have thousands and thousands of users this could be a way to lock a currency price in place and it's digital asset backed. How's that for a crazy idea? Wanna trust your savings to bulk purchases of Steem Monster Booster Packs otherwise known as MBD?
Just concerned about the inflation in packs?
You'll issue packs forever, and they will hold no limited uniqueness. The cards wont either, because the more sbd or steem someone has the more packs they can buy. They will then push the market value of cards down because they are not limited.
And if you are going to limit the amount of cards the value of both cards and packs will go up...
or?
I'm really concerned about this. I want there to be a cap on cards. Why not cap the cards that are out now..and then make a new set also with a cap. Continue to make different "seasons" like basketball cards with limited print.
The whole point of blockchain and gaming IMO is in fact the limited items. In regular games the developer could just drop items whenever thus making certain hard earned items worthless in seconds. The whole point of blockchain gaming is that there is a limit to the amount of items/token, so they do in fact hold some value. And this limitation secures the work and investment of the gamer.
I believe the cap of items is KEY in blockchain gaming. Or else you as a developer can just decide to listen to someone cry about how they have so little monsters and then decide to just lower the price or reissue a lot of packs. This happened in WOW if im not mistaken. And the old school players literally got fucked when all the hard earned items now were inflated due to the fact that developers dropped millions of the same items because of nagging from crybabies who did not want to do the hard work, but instead get shit for free.
Pretty certain we will do some of this later. I'm not imagining it for the Alpha. We have to get a community here if we want this to be successful long term. I can't see limiting myself to how many people can play. For now card scarcity will be driven by combinations.
I think we need to make things like skins, and have the cost of skin be a fully leveled card. Again, to induce some scarcity.
You're right that some value will be brought by scarcity, but number of people in the community will also be a huge factor. So too will prize pool dictate value. The legendaries are worth even more if they can help you earn thousands of SBD.
I don't think it's as simple as limit cards = money for everyone. Lots of ways to make this baby work.
To most people in mainstream society, 5 BTC is a crazily absurd amount of money.
In my workplace there are two of us who have bought any crypto (the other guy manages the databases) - we both regard investing >5% of our TNW in crypto as risky.
Most people I work with think we're both nuts investing anything.
So yes, 5 BTC to most people just sounds crazy, let alone 5 BTC in a new alt coin development.
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love the cards, I've bought about 7 packs: and I might buy more, but ATM I'm spread a bit thin.... and I'm in the 1% of people in the UK whose bought into crypto, richer than 95% of the population here.
In other words, if I'm thinking $20K invested in steemmonsters sounds like an insane amount of money, something like 99.95% of the population will think it's even insaner!
Of course that doesn't stop the cards being fantastic, and it's not going to stop them going up in value, driven by the relatively few people with millions invested in crypto, this crypto space is somewhat detached from mainstream economics after all.
My comment was really written from the perspective on someone with a grasp on 'ordinary society out there' - all I'm saying is most people just don't operate in terms of those sort of numbers, not even rich ones living in the middle of 'stockbroker wealth' on the outskirts of London.
Of course it's perfectly feasible that that 99.95% of the population are the crazy ones and they'll regret missing out in this wonderful innovation you've created - quite possibly.
I read this, which lead me to the monsters and hence I now own a few. Love the idea, can't wait to play me some pokemon.
I think it's a difficult sell as a store of value, given that much like scando said, the supply is very centralized and open to manipulation. Not saying that would happen just saying you would need to change them to be like crypto kitties where the rarity was a well defined and controlled property.
I've seen your name around, and haven't engaged much so I feel weird about it cos you're a le grand whale and all but I help run a community which features a couple of contests all under the name of @comedyopenmic, we've recently started up our own witness and are already producing blocks successfully, I'd greatly appreciate it if I could pick your brain a little on how not to screw up being a witness. We're currently just outside the top 100 and I'd really like to make sure we don't stuff anything up. I know the blockchain will work without us, but I'd like to try have it work with us.
So I've seen almost all witnesses have their maximum_block_size set to 65,536, but by default in someguy123's witness in a box it's set to twice that. How come?
Anyway, thanks for listening.
