There is no market crash, and you're not economists. Ha ha edition.

Edit: And hats are back to 100% of what they were worth last night.GG, team envy.Wonder what they'll do to the non-tradeable hats. I hope they make the effects client-side, that would let the brainlets at least live the dream.This is a long post. Deal with it. It is written in reference to this article here:/contextI don't want to sound mean, but articles like that written by 'rock paper shotgun' are stupid and uneducated. Yes, it's bad for the short-term TF2 economy that Volvo was negligent enough to let some backwater intern press the 'update' button with a brand new exploit, but this as a 'market crash' simply not reflected in the bare facts.Serious unusual traders are not 'panicking'. I am technically an unusuals trader. I got unusuals for my wife and sister. My kid sister texted me this morning to tell me “the TF2 economy is dead”.This sentiment rolled off me like a hacky-sack, because it's something false I have been told time and time again. And this time is no exception. If you even try to look up 'TF2 Market Crash', you're going to find posts and articles from basically every single point of the game's lifespan, and they're all wrong.Why articles and assessments like RPS are wrong :Not to make 'journalist' Alice O'Conner look stupid or ill-informed, but she is incredibly misinformed. It hurts to make a fellow wom look stupid in the games industry, but she laid it bare for us.She even gives us some of the envious groaning that regulars of the Expensive Items thread are used to, whining;“The glitch benefits people who are denied pretty hats by the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ loathsome loot box market which overran TF2 years ago”.Ergo, this is the last person on earth you should get any type of financial information from. They're your run-of-the mill bitter deject who can't grasp basic economic facts, so you should take that as a sound indication that their assessment is worth as much.Example:She seems to think that the “Unusual Glengarry Bonnet with the ‘Dead Presidents’ shower of dollar cash. “ is the “big mac” indicator of the health of the TF2 economy. She thinks Dead Presidents is a good effect, after all. Typical journos, being posers and terrible at it.It isn't a valued hat. It's always been a low tier hat. As are all of the other bargain-bin unusuals currently priced below 10$ in the steam community market right now.Keys are what we price things in, and they're the key commodity of the TF2 economy (no pun intended).We don't price in dollars in this holler, we price in keys.And keys are extremely healthy right now. People who've heard of the exploit have bought lots and lots and lots of keys from Volvo, and from the same traders Alice and people who don't know anything about trading think are panicking.On the contrary: The very start of this exploit may have been the absolute best opportunity to cash out in keys, and the slumping aftermath of the exploit is the absolute best opportunity to buy keys that have flooded the market. It will be even better if Volvo decides to revert all of the exploit transactions, because those keys will return to 'existence' and also flood the market. Some have speculated that Volvo won't do this, but a lot of people expect them to because of the negative coverage and the fact that the exploit is contained to specific crates (which have exploded in value).Imagine if Volvo did revert the unboxes/untradable those hats though. The ratio of keys to refined would reach a healthier point of equilibrium than the 55refined pricing it had been sitting at. It's not as good as creating a proper refined sink, but the aggregate effect on the TF2 economy.....get this....would actually be positive.Market Analysis 101 here:A “Market” is the total of exchanges of all commodities and services in a given market.The only items affected by this exploit are the ones from the specific series of crates, which are currently hovering at about 3 dollars a piece due to the drive in demand. So the only commodities that have “crashed” in value, are those that were from the affected selection of crates.As demand and supply for those crates and the valuables they unbox accelerated, the price of those hats approached the price of the key + the crate.That is why you see those unboxed hats approaching the 4-7 dollar range. That is called “price equilibrium”. You just learned a thing. You're welcome.Because of these natural market forces, there is no incentive to unbox these crates per the exploit anymore, as the likelihood of recovering the value from the purchase of the crate and the purchase of the key has lowered. We can see that people have been exceeding that value (possibly because they either already owned the crates or the keys and wanted to try them) which would add to the supply for the crates/keys, which is why the unbox value for those hats has fallen slightly below the value of the crate + key.Basically meaning, if you're still curious about trying this exploit right now, you're in it to lose value. The people “panicking” right now are those who don't understand speculative investment and who hoarded those crates, because their value will begin to drop off shortly.If you want to watch them panic in real time, go to the listings for any of those crates and scroll down to the people frantically listing for less than 3$. It's fun. Watch.“But Filet, you just said a lot of words. Isn't the TF2 economy dead”No, you heathen.If anything...this nonsense oddly might have stimulated the TF2 economy. Valve has to do something because they can't just wipe out a series of hats and the values of effects, but even worst case scenario if they do nothing the only thing affected are the prices of substitute items.If you're still confused (which you likely are without formal economic knowledge),the TL:DR is that this is not a market crash in any technical sense. It's a steep price drop for a specific range of commodities that has already reached its worst point as of hours ago and the market for those items is already recovering.If you have any questions are need any clarification, feel free to ask. I'll try to answer throughout the day.