There is a tl;dr at the end

Simple Moving Average of 50 Trades just jumps Volume (Quantity of Buds traded in 4 hours) is quadruple (4x) the normal number

Are the trades legit? Is someone trading back and forth between alts, i.e. fake trades? Is there a bug in the system?"

Checking the original_id of Buds Checking the original_id of Keys Investigating friends lists Search for relevant ads on Outpost made by the seller

118809613 1

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We all know that Mann Co Package is grant for every USD$20 of purchase from Store. They had 14-17 Packages, so they "spent" USD$280-$340 on Keys using each account. All the involved accounts in this group were created at least months ago. The accounts were Free-to-Play (Per my replication of Valve's database in May 23, 2012) No weapons/hats stayed in these backpacks. They sometimes open the Mann Co Packages or just give them away to Buds sellers. Usually no Keys/Buds were left behind. The proven accounts NEVER signed in at TF2 Outpost. However, they do look for Buds sellers there. They refer each other to the largest Buds sellers on Outpost

Has 65 Members Of which 30 has Public Backpacks Of which 23 are Premium Of which 6 has Keys left Of which 6 has Mann Co Packages left Of which 7 are Free-to-Play Of which 35 has Private Backpacks



How did the Russians in this post manage to purchase vast amount of Keys from Valve, regularly, via fraudulent means? Theory (Speculation) Get new accounts Wait for a few months Buy Keys @USD$2.49 from Store with Stolen Credit Card (Usually USD$300 total) Buy Buds from largest sellers on Outpost @2 Keys higher than daily average Sell Buds for USD$22.71 or Webmoney equivalent Keys get circulated in the market Credit Card company charges back Valve because virtual item has no cost Valve never deletes injected keys Repeat Step 1

Feel free to propose more theories. Are these acts conducted by a single person or distinct users? If it is not the former, does a "leader" exist among the Keys purchasers? Were the first two accounts (Gnom, purplerat) mentioned in beginning related to the Steam Group? Were the accounts "Hijacked" to become alts of Keys purchasers, or did the purchasers prepared the accounts over the last few years? Why do some of them trade alternating Keys (either odd or even original_id) to Buds sellers? Is it a safety measure to bypass Valve's Steam Support tracking system so that the Keys "Do not look concentrated" in certain backpacks? Why do the Keys purchaser choose the largest Buds sellers on Outpost aside from the benefit of having continuous stock of Buds? There were members of the Steam Group being trade banned. Does larger Buds seller on Outpost have lower risk of being trade banned because of receiving suspicious Keys, given that their trading record is legit?

When did the Russians mentioned start injecting keys into the market? Fall 2011 when Buds started to rise? Summer 2012? Before Halloween? For sure it is not today. What if such injection of Keys is the main cause of indefinite decrease in value of Keys for the past 2 years? What if such method of injecting Keys is the main cause of the dramatic increases of the Price of Earbuds in terms of both USD and Key value? Do you prefer such Keys being constantly injected into the market? What should we do as legit traders? What should have been done to the Store purchasing system if you were given authority?