I’ve said elsewhere that I run thousands (not tens of thousands) of nodes and don’t intend to sell even one ANT for several years. I haven’t gone into my strategy so I’ll summarize it.
My strategy has three phases; node ops, build, promote.
- Node ops - Get a couple dozen servers up and running. Infrastructure and dev are my main skillsets so it’s something I can contribute to the network, and there’s no network without nodes operating. While evolving my platform’s automation and optimization will be an ongoing thing, in a week I’ll be able to shift to phase 2.
- Build - Without useful apps and services built on the network it’s pointless. Dev is another thing I can contribute to the network and I’m eager to get back to Verifi and other ideas I have enqueued. I’ll spend 2 years on this phase.
- Promote - With a solid network, and an array of apps and services built, there will be many valuable things to point people to. Some of my own creation, many created by others. I’ll spend a year on this phase.
Three years from now, the initial value of ANT will finally be known to me, and I’ll consider selling some. Until then, it’s Bitcoin pizza.
Regarding payouts, they were much more lavish in the first 48 hours of the network being live when there were far fewer nodes. It appears to me that there’s a fixed amount being disbursed twice daily, evenly spread across the quantity of nodes. To have substantial infra onhand at the snap of fingers makes the payouts pretty reasonable, and pretty soon any ‘gold rush’ will be over. At that point of equilibrium, only shrewd node ops and casual home users will remain.