Addendum I: It's becoming exponentially harder to prove key sales due to the massive amounts of metal required and resulting difficulty in constraining a metal transfer on a bot to a key sale (unless there's a listings bot dedicated only to reselling keys), I personally think it should be more based on showing where bot buy and sell walls are clustered by the distribution of listings to buy/sell (based on quantities able to buy/sell of course).
Addendum II: I can personally attest that a sizeable chunk of my bot's key sales keep originating from a handful of suspicious profiles that seem dedicating solely to arbitraging keys (likely between various sites or bots I don't know about) or just farming ref, given that their steam inventories seem to only consist of TF2 currencies. I have these individuals' profiles on hand should anyone care to investigate.
there's a page of auto-buyers at 51.33 so this seems real unstable atm
and here-in lies the problem, due to the few-day minimum turnaround to reprice them, any suggestion is likely to already be out of date and invalidated
this sure is better than the current price though...
with a majority of buyers now at 51.33 this really needs 2 b included in range and revisited
If they're unclear, then you can take screenshots and upload them to something like imgur for evidence
I'm aware, just that counting each one is cruel and unusual punishment (mostly wouldn't fit on single pages for screenshots anyway)
With regards to addendum I, lately classifieds have been placing speculative bets way, way, waaaaaaaaaaay higher than market consensus, but then the market follows along (and the cycle repeats, alarmingly quickly at that). In situations like these when the market is on these "runs" my gut feeling is to wait a while and see if it stops, but we might very well have reached a point of true hyperinflation which may make nailing down a new baseline extremely tough, unless things calm down for a bit or pull back some. And yes, STN does run high vs market, it's deliberate, it's an inventory control measure, etc etc.
With ref at $0.04 each, keys have already gone from ~$1.70 in ref to a bit over $2 in just a few months. If the price keeps raising and bots keep going above, refined may either have nearly no or keys will be just as if not more expensive than they would be were you to buy them from the in-game store
I don't see any indication that keys will raise that much anytime soon, the "real" price of ref is more like $.035 each right now, but marketplace.tf doesn't allow you to fractionalize it, so people just sell at 4 cents. This is a discrepancy you can take advantage of (if you can even get enough volume of people buying your ref), but it doesn't inherently mean keys jump up in price. It just means that ref will drop the full cent to 3 cents each at around 60 ref per key (under current key pricing).
Because of continuously random drops we will always be more stocked on items and metal until it gets removed (if ever) This is why keys keep raising. Devs need to make changes and since it's not the actual "price list" but only estimated range, it's always better to make a range more accurate than it is because of the massive fluctation on key prices.
Bettter than the current price, guess upvote.
This will need resuggestig, it's gone up too quickly.
why are keys skyrocketing? jesus yesterday they were 50 and they will become 52 today
As always, just the equilibrium price dictated by supply and demand, but a good portion of demand appears to be coming from a handful of shady individuals who are either intentionally juicing the price, farming metal, and/or simply arbitraging the keys and ref across trading sites for small profits.
That said, in general people don't like to have to sacrifice an entire page of their inventory to store 2 dollars of value, making this a self-replicating problem as virtually noone inherently wants to trade keys for ref rather than the other way around.
that seems about right
TF2 gambling is back, TF2 keys are such great tradable and marketable currency I presume
please do not make such comments if its not going to give any contribution to this suggestion.this is how the market and economic work.just gonna end up getting warned
nooo we don't need a bigger price noooooo
the economy IS already dying because of the key prices! The refind metal needs a bigger price and not the keys
(but for that we need more craft hats)
We need a ref sink that people will actually use. Trading above one key won't be affected by any of this however as the key is the most stable currency in tf2.
Dark times have come. Time to slowly get biger back pack because i fell in air 1 key for 100 ref black power is in coming. xP And ye this legit keys wort now 50+ref
I'm strongly against pricing these up until they become slightly more stable. Keys are already bought at 51.33 ref, which is above the provided range here.
You sound clueless. We base keys on metal and since all inventories become more stacked it will always go up and never in the history of tf2 did keys achieve 1 stable range, lmao.
I think I know why i'm possibly part of people causing this it's gambling i'm gambling for Unusual just get atleast 300$ and payout and il be done gambling
A more likely explanation as to why refined per key is growing as fast as it is giving the current supply the only place you can trustfully sell refined for real money that isnt from a person is marketplace.tf since no items under 5 cents are taxed and refined selling for 4 cents its a very good way of generating money. Heres how it goes
1. Buy keys for a wicked discount 1.8 and below (bitskins has tf2 keys for like 1.51 usd last i checked but that was a bit ago)
2. Sell those keys for refined metal
3. Sell that refined on marketplace.tf
4. Profit 20 cents per key given refined/key offers by autobuyers
This i would think would be the most likely explanation of why refined has been shooting up ever since i quit tf2 at the end of last year and went to csgo, as this is definitely an artificial demand boost by various peoples bots. Now I cant verify that this is the case as there are so many damn bots and people selling refined on marketplace but its definitely something to think about.
And being that im now quite heavy into csgo trading and their community i know several traders in CSGO that are using tf2 to make more profits and trades quicker Since CSGO has a 7 day trade hold on items which is fine, everyone here is here to make money and get items they want so its possible weve seen a decent influx of CS traders and their use of tf2 items on cross game trading sites, but you really dont see them as they dont interact with the TF2 community all that much
Keys are having a spiky price fluctuation from what it seems at the moment. It's best to be patient until there is a smooth stable number of price and sales to make a suggestion.
Predicated on whether they will remain absolutely stable within a few scrap for at least a few days, then yeah.
I still am of the belief that putting a bandaid on the price for the time being is better than nothing at all, since a 10% discrepancy on a basic currency isn't a healthy precedent to set for rank and file traders that will just blindly go off of the old price and get ripped off.
It's definitely better to bandaid the price, right now almost no one follows it due to it being so far from the real price. I am quite saddened this suggestion has yet to be approved
I agree with j58 sellers above the suggested range
Its time to stop
this will need a bigger raise looking at buyers/sellers
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. NOT ANOTHER KEY INFLATION. WHYYYYYY
I'm just waiting for the day, where we can't buy keys with refs anymore, because we can't fit all 3000+ refs into our inventory with 3000 capacity
(this will take like 200 years though)
Just w8 in 2025 we can have this price ... cuz no one can stop this madness
the end is near
Question... with scrap being such a small fraction of the actual price, why do we insist on a 1 scrap price range instead of a larger range? Keys arent sold in a 1 scrap range (by bots generally) and havent been for a long time
In other news, the classic doomsday theories about TF2 dying are back in full force thanks in part to a video by TheAfricanRedHead. His understanding of this matter is not well-informed, since people trading ref back and forth is not what gives Valve tens of millions in revenue on TF2 every year.
In reality, the backbone of the TF2 economy isn't inherently derived from direct trading: it's the cash flows into the game via Marketplace and Steam Market. As long as there are items (like keys or genuines) that players are willing to spend money on, and other items that they are in turn willing to trade those staple items for, there's still an economy. CS:GO has done quite well for not having a non-key currency, so can TF2.
TL;DR stop fear-mongering about the end of trading, keys have been about $1.80 USD for a long time and still are
We need to do something.. Soon 1 key gonna be 100refs worth ... hate how economy have change the game.
the ref is not useful for anything the craftingsystem isn't profitable so that the reason why keys are going up in price maybe in the near future we need to choose another sub-currency
and day after day bp is shooting it s own foot with bots and suggestions like that. 10-20 bots (users) deciding the economy of tf.You all see the tree but not the bloody forest. Cheers
They probably consider themselves pro, but i don't see them looking at the market in a big picture and that's why they will never "own" the price market.
The mods not accepting this as the new price for so long is the real indication that trading is dying, not this price.
this is a currency item for tf2's trading.they need time to check the buyers,sellers and others to see if this price is ok to be accepted for now or if a new adjustment is needed.nothing is dying.
it's been a week, and nobody is using this price anymore, nor the suggested one. had it passed on the same day, it would have likely put an end to the key rise
It wouldn't what
I would check again and see where prices have been selling at this point its outdated almost by a ref
Someone else can put in the legwork, a week passed without action on a basic suggestion for an essential price kinda kills any motivation for me to bother suggesting again.
The pricing was incorrect, as the price kept rising. You didn't do anything wring but the timing just wouldn't allow for a suggestion like this to be accepted. No reason to accept something that would instantly become outdated.
100% agree. Watch my comment below. Mods are taking this topic way too far and suggestion should've been accepted loooong ago. Clean upvote!!
Why is this suggestion not accepted yet? Mods - this suggestion even has proof and it's obvious it's going up. We have some people only checking bp prices and not how the market changes and they are definitely relying on estimated prices and not users selling/buying. This will trick them and for a currency with a strong market you gotta cut some slack on the proof tbh. In the long run, this price is more accurate than the current adressed one.
Pretty much outdated now, keys sell for a ref more at the time I'm writing this comment.
Haha, this one makes me smile :) It's logic at this point, but apparently you "should" be looking into military intelligence to become a moderator on bp, haha.
But oh no, we can't give points to someone without proof, oh no they are not worth reputation points, lmao. But what can you do. For devs it's about money and for mods it's about useless rep points.
Fine, I'll do it, but this will probably already be out of date in a few days if these ref farmers keep mass buying.
scrap.tf buy/sell spread 49.88-50.11 (EMPTY!)
stntrading.eu buy/sell spread 51.44/52.00 (Very well-stocked, probably a bit high for now)
Snapshot at time of suggestion: strong buy wall at 51 ref, weak sell wall at 51.11 ref
Sales:
My own bot, many sales overnight at 51 ref per up until its backpack filled up completely (really messy though because of other item trades)
Many sales last night at 51.11 ref (much cleaner to read)
More sales at 51.11 ref (somewhat hard to pare)
Couple more at 51.11 ref (easier)
and on and on and on it goes
Addendum I: It's becoming exponentially harder to prove key sales due to the massive amounts of metal required and resulting difficulty in constraining a metal transfer on a bot to a key sale (unless there's a listings bot dedicated only to reselling keys), I personally think it should be more based on showing where bot buy and sell walls are clustered by the distribution of listings to buy/sell (based on quantities able to buy/sell of course).
Addendum II: I can personally attest that a sizeable chunk of my bot's key sales keep originating from a handful of suspicious profiles that seem dedicating solely to arbitraging keys (likely between various sites or bots I don't know about) or just farming ref, given that their steam inventories seem to only consist of TF2 currencies. I have these individuals' profiles on hand should anyone care to investigate.
there's a page of auto-buyers at 51.33 so this seems real unstable atm
and here-in lies the problem, due to the few-day minimum turnaround to reprice them, any suggestion is likely to already be out of date and invalidated
this sure is better than the current price though...
with a majority of buyers now at 51.33 this really needs 2 b included in range and revisited
If they're unclear, then you can take screenshots and upload them to something like imgur for evidence
I'm aware, just that counting each one is cruel and unusual punishment (mostly wouldn't fit on single pages for screenshots anyway)
With regards to addendum I, lately classifieds have been placing speculative bets way, way, waaaaaaaaaaay higher than market consensus, but then the market follows along (and the cycle repeats, alarmingly quickly at that). In situations like these when the market is on these "runs" my gut feeling is to wait a while and see if it stops, but we might very well have reached a point of true hyperinflation which may make nailing down a new baseline extremely tough, unless things calm down for a bit or pull back some. And yes, STN does run high vs market, it's deliberate, it's an inventory control measure, etc etc.
With ref at $0.04 each, keys have already gone from ~$1.70 in ref to a bit over $2 in just a few months. If the price keeps raising and bots keep going above, refined may either have nearly no or keys will be just as if not more expensive than they would be were you to buy them from the in-game store
I don't see any indication that keys will raise that much anytime soon, the "real" price of ref is more like $.035 each right now, but marketplace.tf doesn't allow you to fractionalize it, so people just sell at 4 cents. This is a discrepancy you can take advantage of (if you can even get enough volume of people buying your ref), but it doesn't inherently mean keys jump up in price. It just means that ref will drop the full cent to 3 cents each at around 60 ref per key (under current key pricing).
Because of continuously random drops we will always be more stocked on items and metal until it gets removed (if ever) This is why keys keep raising. Devs need to make changes and since it's not the actual "price list" but only estimated range, it's always better to make a range more accurate than it is because of the massive fluctation on key prices.
Bettter than the current price, guess upvote.
This will need resuggestig, it's gone up too quickly.
I'm strongly against pricing these up until they become slightly more stable. Keys are already bought at 51.33 ref, which is above the provided range here.
You sound clueless. We base keys on metal and since all inventories become more stacked it will always go up and never in the history of tf2 did keys achieve 1 stable range, lmao.
Keys are having a spiky price fluctuation from what it seems at the moment. It's best to be patient until there is a smooth stable number of price and sales to make a suggestion.
Predicated on whether they will remain absolutely stable within a few scrap for at least a few days, then yeah.
I still am of the belief that putting a bandaid on the price for the time being is better than nothing at all, since a 10% discrepancy on a basic currency isn't a healthy precedent to set for rank and file traders that will just blindly go off of the old price and get ripped off.
It's definitely better to bandaid the price, right now almost no one follows it due to it being so far from the real price. I am quite saddened this suggestion has yet to be approved
I agree with j58 sellers above the suggested range
this will need a bigger raise looking at buyers/sellers
Question... with scrap being such a small fraction of the actual price, why do we insist on a 1 scrap price range instead of a larger range? Keys arent sold in a 1 scrap range (by bots generally) and havent been for a long time
and day after day bp is shooting it s own foot with bots and suggestions like that. 10-20 bots (users) deciding the economy of tf.You all see the tree but not the bloody forest. Cheers
They probably consider themselves pro, but i don't see them looking at the market in a big picture and that's why they will never "own" the price market.
The mods not accepting this as the new price for so long is the real indication that trading is dying, not this price.
this is a currency item for tf2's trading.they need time to check the buyers,sellers and others to see if this price is ok to be accepted for now or if a new adjustment is needed.nothing is dying.
it's been a week, and nobody is using this price anymore, nor the suggested one. had it passed on the same day, it would have likely put an end to the key rise
It wouldn't what
I would check again and see where prices have been selling at this point its outdated almost by a ref
Someone else can put in the legwork, a week passed without action on a basic suggestion for an essential price kinda kills any motivation for me to bother suggesting again.
The pricing was incorrect, as the price kept rising. You didn't do anything wring but the timing just wouldn't allow for a suggestion like this to be accepted. No reason to accept something that would instantly become outdated.
100% agree. Watch my comment below. Mods are taking this topic way too far and suggestion should've been accepted loooong ago. Clean upvote!!
Why is this suggestion not accepted yet? Mods - this suggestion even has proof and it's obvious it's going up. We have some people only checking bp prices and not how the market changes and they are definitely relying on estimated prices and not users selling/buying. This will trick them and for a currency with a strong market you gotta cut some slack on the proof tbh. In the long run, this price is more accurate than the current adressed one.
Pretty much outdated now, keys sell for a ref more at the time I'm writing this comment.
Haha, this one makes me smile :) It's logic at this point, but apparently you "should" be looking into military intelligence to become a moderator on bp, haha.
But oh no, we can't give points to someone without proof, oh no they are not worth reputation points, lmao. But what can you do. For devs it's about money and for mods it's about useless rep points.
?