Market Discussions

CCP needs to upgrade their sinks to Kohler.

In my (deep) pockets

ISK Sink - Something that takes ISK out of player hands.
ISK Faucet - Something that puts ISK into player hands.

Note, this isn't a specific players hands. This is any players hands.

A ship being destroyed removed no isk from anyone. yes, a player no longer has the value of the asset, but the isk in their wallet doesn't change. The ISK that was paid for the ship is safe and warm in the manufacturers wallet.

So you understand it wrong. We're not concerned about an individuals wallet. We're concerned about the total value of isk in all player wallets as a whole.

Rigs aren't a sink, as no isk was destroyed in their making (except a minor cost for the use of a manufacturing slot).

Implants are a sink, but only those bought from the LP store (implants from missions don't count). And they're a sink at the time they're bought.



PI taxes are going to be interesting here. There's a significantly higher percentage leaving there, as related to the total value of the PI goods.

OK sorry my bad, you literally mean just the currency not assests.

PLEX are faucets.

eve q4 2010 http://cdn1.eveonline.com/community/QEN/QEN_Q4-2010.pdf

The Monetary System
In Q4, 2010, EVE‘s subscriber count grew by 9%, which translated into an increase in money supply.
The money supply rose by 11% in Q4 2010 and there is now a combined 445 trillion ISK on all
accounts within EVE. That represents the sum total of ISK in the game, on both active and inactive
accounts. To get a better understanding of the current money supply, we also calculate the total
money supply of players currently playing EVE, omitting lapsed subscriptions. Approximately 258
trillion ISK are on active paying accounts and 33 trillion on player corporation accounts, increasing
the total on active paying accounts and player corporation accounts by around 35 trillion in the
quarter.


....

I'll leave my commentary off mostly as its more complicated than most will grok, but the long and short of it is that 11% a quarter would be like a 50% inflation rate annually without probably 1/2 of that moving from active to inactive status.

Read the report farther and you get an idea about the magnitude of net earnings faucets vs sinks. Not only are Faucets 2x what the sinks are, the totaly daily flow o netf isk created is of an ammount of a similar order of magnitude of the total daily market trades (its about 1/2......not 1/10th is what i mean).

Much of the trade on the market we know has got to be cycling of isk of traders turning around and buying more stuff with the isk they just collected....so truly the isk creation is substantial

Given the retirement figures as proprotion of total isk outstanding and the percentages of flow per day to trading

I have got to think that the vast majority of the isk in the game never gets touched at all but piles up in peoples accounts who like shooting red boxes and then only leaves the game( (and doesn't really leave by some definition) when they let their account go innactive.

Basically, the player given economy is a fraction of the META game player moves of piling up isk they'll never use and retiring with amounts that would absolutely overwhelm the markets if they had instead tried to use it actively.

brags about the immense record trade volume achieved one december day of 1.8 trillion isk. Now, in the quote from my other post above we noted that active accounts had about 300 trillion sitting in them and inactive accounts another 150 trillion or so.

I know there are isk transactions outside of the markets (contracts, player to player) but the open market has got to be at least what those are (i'd guess way more but still)

That trading volume is such a tiny portion of isk reserves.. even at double or tripple it we're still talking about trade only being in a 1% of Isk in accounts .....

.... and we know that traders make up a fair chunk of the volume too ..active traders will likely cycle their isk more quickly until they have too much isk to employ with their time and interest in the game.

I'm guessing that if you tried to estimate natural user-buyers of goods and services (as opposed to peole buying with the expectation to resell or use items to create an item that they will in) its far less than 1 trillion total daily including the end user portion of player to player transactions.


For all you guys arguing about the purity of eve money supply and the risks of ccp tampering in the markets...

.... take a closer look at the magnitudes.

what you do and your friends do in game are much more the exception perhaps.

It looks like the big story of the game is a that a Fair segment of the players collect ISK as a large portion of their game play then leave in in their accounts when they move to play another game

Thats what the economy is really about... meta things like real people collecting some game points in he way of virtual currency then leaving the "score" intact with it worth little to them unless and until they come back 3 years later, at which time it would likely be worth 1/4 of what it was when they left in terms of the relative effort needed to get isk per hour then vs now.

If you look at the numbers on the CCP report I linked you can squint your eyes and see insurance on the graphs

BTW insurance purchase is a sink but the insurance payout is a faucet

They show more being paid out than taken in by insurance so insurance is a net faucet of ISK into the game


Basically insurance looks to be almost negibible in magnitude in its contribution as a faucet or sink.

HOWEVER,, this excercise is leading me to beleive you have two seperate economies in eve.. that in which players who actually use the ships and get them blown up, participate, and another "economy" of people who create isk with pve and let it stack up.

the "real" economy is probably much smaller in size than the isk values unrelated to eventual ship warfare ... but as that is the true game economy, insurance MAY be a quite important factor in that real portion of the economy....it could grow from being 3% of economic activity to 30% of activity for the portion of players that it matters to


(NOTE all of you guys with a problem with words.. yes ships can get detroyed and game Wealth can get detroyed meaning you'd have less stuff you could sell for isk.... but isk itself isn't destroyed only things that have an isk value)