Market Discussions

It's a composite of several different factors.

GTC's are bought by players to fund activites that aren't generating as much as they cost to do.

This occurs when players are new to the game and by those who do not wish to do the PvE activities to come up with the isk to fund their game play.

The older a char is; the more isk they can make. The older a char is; the more they see a second account as being desired/required to do what they want. usually at least 1 extra character tends to be aimed at more "passive incomes" and the surplus income is often used to fund the account via PLEX.

With less "new blood" showing up, the character base's age has gone up. This means they know how to avoid sinks while tapping faucets plus as they can obtain more isk far easier, they begin to look at plexing an account vs paying for it so demand goes up with older chars.

ISK faucets have been on the rise while ISK sinks have been lowered. This leads to more ISK in circulation with a small body of players providing PLEX. Supply is thinned down a bit while demand keeps going up.

The above is just a small sample of how it comes together. There are a lot of other factors involved that lend themselves to the price increase we see.

Or, as stated: Supply and demand. The Supply of isk is high. The supply of plex isn't as high. The demand for plex is fairly high and growing.

CCP is pushing PLEX in advertising and such "too expensive!!!" posts will help to move more of the stuff onto the market but SOMEONE needs to buy the GTC's to get the plex and those willing to do so aren't coming forward in droves - yet.