Another super interesting economy is steam money,
It has become apparent to me that valve has designed their item market in a very clever, very sneaky way.

It's easy to get `real money` into `steambucks`, and almost impossible to get them out. People view `$1 steambuck = $1 real` but are in fact far far less valuable.

Games can constantly print items and "airdrop" them free onto players at no cost. Items are rarely sold, and if they are sold, they're being sold in order to afford more expensive items in that same economy. Steambucks never leave.

Games on steam release items in waves, discontinuing the supply process for past items. These supply-discontinued items feel rare to people, and on average get bid up with increases in player base. Everyone's item value in steambucks goes up.

People go nuts over these 'rare' items, everyone knows the steam item market simply goes in one direction --- up. People start depositing large sums of money into steambucks. Not because they want to buy cool skins for their game, but because they want to invest in the rarity and scarcity of steam items. Steambuck portfolios. (reminiscent the nft craze isn't it).

Ok now you've got a lot of steambucks, you might finally want to get them out. There's no "withdraw" button. You search for a 3rd party item for cash exchange. All the links are dead because either they were scams or valve smacked them with copyright or something. Finally you find someone barely trustworthy that recommends a marketplace. The marketplace offers you 40c on the dollar, and that's not including all your steam market fees to convert your items into the items they want.

Grim.. so what can you spend your steambucks on? Games. Games that valve can print for free. And their steamdeck.

t. my csgo cases i got 'airdropped' in 2016 went up a lot