Bought a couple @standard_rsv charters during the mint / public sale a couple of weeks ago, and after a week of thinking about it, decided to max them both out. Love me a good ol' ponzi and the hopium of a year's forecasted earnings. Currently, a 10-branch charter bank gives you ~550 USD per day in robinhood:0x88ad8ddf1e3898412146a534538d418c6f8a9062 (~.25c) or ~200,000 USD per year. So on paper, I'm going to make $400k with two fully maxed out banks. Ofc this is pure hopium right now—the project needs to find sustainability. Can they do it? I don't know, but I have about $400,000 reasons to hope they do! The boy inside me who just wants to sit at a beach and retire by just printing from my NFT banks dreams of this being so. But alas, we have a long way to go before this is a reality. If it can be a reality. CT moved on after a few days post-TGE, and the initial hype kind of petered out, but the team has been shipping. This actually had me looking more closely at it. I find that when CT goes quiet, that's probably the best time to buy into something, as you are not chasing a pump, but buying in before the hype comes back. I think that's partly because the charters are (currently) soulbound, and the price of entry is about ~15,000 USD to buy one of the 2 daily charter auctions. Most people are sidelined here as the banks are simply too expensive for 99%. I have a feeling though this could get wildly crazy over the coming months. The bull case is the project converts itself into a sort of decentralized reserve bank. If so, holding a bank charter could be a literal money printer. Of course, it could (and likely will, given how difficult it is) fail and the token collapses. But it could get pretty wild before the end. I'm in it to see what's happening, and I'm considering buying 1 or 2 more charters here on that bet. The overall mechanics of Standard Reserve are quite interesting, with various levers designed to create a deflationary ecosystem and earn yeild outside of token inflation (the end goal being a sort of decentralized banking vault where the liquidity can be used for stocks, with banks earning fees from this). So far, the token mechanics are (for now) working: token price has stabilized, twice-daily single-bank-branch auctions are selling at close to ~5.5 ETH. The demand seems to be there to get into the ecosystem, for those rich enough to afford the entry ticket. Current cost for a 10-branch bank: -5.5e (1 charter via auction) = $15,000 -10 branches x $ 8,400 (STANDARD = $21,000 = $36,000 Payback for full bank + 10 branches is about 67 days, assuming the current token prices, bank output, branch costs, and charter costs. Obviously, things will change here drastically. Bank branches seem to be rising 10-20% per week in the auctions. Token and charter prices could rise or fall depending on what additions the team brings. At some point, the charters and the branches will level off, and the price will stabilize or come down. But when that happens, that's not yet clear. You either buy in now and increase your coin output, or bet on the token price and/or the branches + charter drop. And there's still a lot more updates coming to make this ecosystem even more interesting (and sustainable). The point is to create a reserve bank, with the reserves used to earn fees and drive that value back to token and bank holders (by becoming the stock liquidity engine). That has not even been turned on yet; keep this in mind. If it works, the project could shift from a Ponzi to something more like a decentralized bank with OHM-style levers. What we have now works for now, but we need much more to make it sustainable and interesting for existing holders and more accessible for new holders. My guess is we'll see much more utility for the charters + branches, making it worth holding the token and as many banks + branches as you can. 1/ S bill staking (stake tokens for yeild which comes from token trading fees, staking penalty fees, reserve buybacks with other revenues -- all via an auction mechanic where you set your own expected APY) 2/ Stock liquidity (end game) bringing actual revenues to the protocol, which will feed back to the token AND, I presume, to bank holders. 3/ Future mechanics? Right now it's a very closed ecosystem, with few ways for new participants to enter. Charters for now are soulbound (I think we'll open them up to be tradable in a controlled way later). The only way to extract your coins is by spending them on more bank branches OR by closing a branch to extract the robinhood:0x88ad8ddf1e3898412146a534538d418c6f8a9062 locked into that branch. You will pay a fee, and you'll lose the branch and its earning potential, which at current values is about $2100. So unless you have MORE coins than the value of the branch, it's not worth burning your branch, which keeps the tokens locked into a sort of hard staking. A buy-in of ~15k for the charter and 21k for 10 branches (to max out your bank earnings) is too high. So we need to lower the barrier and make it accessible. One idea here could be to introduce a franchise mechanic where each bank could 'license' some kind of limited number of franchise licenses per charter, using an auction mechanic, which allows cheaper mini branches to be leased with some earning mechanic. I haven't thought this through, but opening the gates to let smaller investors join would be a good thing. Overall, I'm enjoying this game. It's wildly experimental and risky. I'm not going to say this is anything but a Ponzi right now, but with the deflationary mechanisms, s-bill revenues back to the token, and the stock liquidity (actual revenues captured with the treasury reserves), this is a very interesting ecosystem. I don't know...I have a feeling this could really go pretty crazy over the coming months and do some insane numbers. We'll see, but I'm considering buying a few more Charters on that bet. I can't recommend anyone new buying into the ecosystem for the ~$36,000 entry ticket to gain exposure. Only those with the capital and risk appetite should consider it. And buying the token only makes sense right now if you are expecting a short-term trade. You are better off holding the NFTs here for the long term. But I have a feeling there will be other ways to join the ecosystem besides just buying the token. Definitely an ecosystem to watch, especially if the token and charters show stability over the coming weeks.