Deep thoughts: The price of ice

Deep thoughts monday is a column that looks deeper into EVE’s future and history. The writer does not take responsibility for any mental or physical damage in or out of game.

As most of you know ice belts will go the way of the dodo in the new patch. This has brought on a couple of things, the price has been doubled, the amount of iceminers has tripled (at least in Elonaya) and everyone is betting on a inflated price.

So I’ve been wondering, will this last?

The price increase seemed to go on and on, luckily it has, since the announcement, found a median on 200K isk. The increase in miners has dampened the price inflation and as of now is holding it in check.

Speculations are wide ranged, from huge price increases to bursting bubbles but nobody is giving reasons.

What can we expect?

It’s very though to judge, it depends on several things:

1. Will players dump their ice on the market with release hoping for big iskies?

2. Have pos-owners stacked up any ice to cope with the change?

3. Will players ice mine in lo-sec? (0.0 there will be mining by the big alliances, you can bet on it)

4. How soon will the change have an effect?

5. Hisec will have 80% of the ice IF it is all mined during the day… but will it? will players scan and hunt down ice the whole day? Is that going to be a real new form of icemining?

There are a lot of variables but let’s try and answer or at least speculate on some.

1. Probably yes, I think that a lot of miners are hoarding ice and are going to slowly release it to the market (for the smart ones) or dump it straight away at higher prices, hoping the lower prices get bought out fairly quickly (the dumb ones)

This has a two possibilities though:It can crash the market, too much product dumped at the same time with no change to the demand can cripple the market for a while. Or it can boost the price if it’s done not right after the patch but a couple of weeks after when the supply “shortage” hits (look at point 2)

2. Jupz, most alliances will have some hoarding going on to cope with the price or have their own miners employed. I think that this will compensate the “shortage” for a few days-weeks. If players don’t dump their products on day 1 of the patch, this has the potential to off-set any major price changes a week or two, after which you will see the prices rising.

3. Good question, Next question.

4. As said above this can be instant or a few weeks after the patch, it depends on the players. If the community has a knee-jerk reaction, The immediate reaction is either a) crash of the market or b) peak of the market followed by a period of recovery. If not the price will gradually shift to the new center of supply and demand.

5. I do not think that ice in hisec will be mined for it’s full potential each and every day. During the weekends we will see 100% of ice mined out in hisec but during the week? No. I don’t think so, My personal speculation lies between 50-75% depending on the day of the week. (Monday 50%, Wednesday 75%)

It’s a speculation game at the moment and we’ll just have to wait and see who will win and who will lose.

PS: if you see any errors in my thinking or writing, comment bellow!