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Currency Inflation


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7 hours ago, Batty said:

If keys continue going up, we will eventally see a market crash when refined becomes worthless, as the only working currency would be keys, which cant be made without buying from valve.

That's the reason keys are such a stable currency, because their value is more or less fixed in terms of actual money. Metal is free and is introduced into the system at a much higher rate than it leaves the system. I'm not sure why anyone is surprised that its value relative to the key keeps decreasing.

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On 12/13/2016 at 8:07 PM, Ben | Scrap.TF said:

That's the reason keys are such a stable currency, because their value is more or less fixed in terms of actual money. Metal is free and is introduced into the system at a much higher rate than it leaves the system. I'm not sure why anyone is surprised that its value relative to the key keeps decreasing.

Probably because of how quickly it's rising. I would've expected maybe a one refined rise every two weeks, but it's rising by five instead.

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Unless valve does something to make metal useful to use in crafting, it has no real value to it and the price of keys will go up in refined more and more. Eventually sellers will have a hard time finding buyers and we might hit some apex eventually, but it would not likely crash to where the price would come down significantly. I think key sellers would just rely on the marketplace instead of seeing the price in refined drop down to below the current prices we see now. 

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As has been said (elsewhere?) Valve likely doesn't care because they want people to purchase keys. Honestly, I don't think they really pay much attention - they likely keep an eye on profits, etc, and if it's going the right way, they don't bother.

 

That said, if metal continues to be devalued there will be something else to use as currency. Not sure what...

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Its the issue w/ currency. Metal is something everyone needs, so in that sense its a currency that continues to grow, much like dollars. Keys are like gold (or some other commodity) and people buy it to hedge against inflation to some degree. In order to keep metal down they'd have to require people to demand more of it and either store it or take it out of circulation. Someone at one time suggested using metal for man up tickets or some such thing. It would be a good idea to do if valve wants to keep TF2 afloat. People are really just demanding less metal because there isn't much use for it. Sucks, but it is what it is. Hats can be bought on the steam market now, so no one really cares about the old craft hats. 

Edited by Xor
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  • 2 weeks later...

At some point, people will just say "fuck it" and refuse to buy keys anymore. Regardless of that, however, there will be those few people that still buy and sell which will further increase the price. And when that area is reached, the trading community will most likely wither away as there will be little to no activity whatsoever.

You may see a craft hat or two traded around, but once you get to keys, it'll be nothing.

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22 minutes ago, Ezekiel said:

At some point, people will just say "fuck it" and refuse to buy keys anymore. Regardless of that, however, there will be those few people that still buy and sell which will further increase the price. And when that area is reached, the trading community will most likely wither away as there will be little to no activity whatsoever.

You may see a craft hat or two traded around, but once you get to keys, it'll be nothing.

Some point, eh? Gonna be at least after Trump's done with his 8 year run at the earliest before that shit happens :birdspy:

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The recent price changes with metal I think adds a new wrinkle to this. Those bots from STN (and here) and other bot sellers ended up with a huge stockpile of keys and started dumping them at lower and lower prices (though we only saw a drop of not quite 5 refined before it ended). It's been about a week and prices are already up 2 refined. 

 

I expect prices will go back up and hit 30 and beyond. Pyro update should be out before the summer sale and when that drops, that should affect key prices but unless new weapons come out or valve introduces something requiring crafting of metal (like the breadbox event) I don't expect to see a drop in key prices. The summer sale is probably the next time we'll see anything creating pressure on keys as people sell keys for steambucks to buy games (and trading cards).

 

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