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Dil Exchange Trading Volume: Real Data!
lokharno
Member Posts: 59 Arc User
There's been a lot of discussion about whether spending zen to buy dilithium has literally stopped. So I thought I do the experiment and find out. I placed an order to buy zen around 7 pm on August 14th. There were orders for a little under a million zen ahead of me. My order executed at about 4 am today (8/17). So that's a little less than two and a half days (or about 60 hours). Assuming that Cryptic simply queues orders for sequential execution, we can draw some conclusions.
In 60 hours, zen sellers -- who, it turns out, do exist after all -- sold about 950,000 zen (to clear all the orders ahead of mine). That's a little under 16,000 zen per hour.
Now, in a well-functioning market -- like the dil exchange a few weeks ago -- an order to buy at the market price would clear within seconds, normally fewer than two seconds. So 60 hours isn't good. The price cap is definitely constricting the trading volume.
But the idea that "nobody" is selling zen for dilithium is clearly bollocks.
In 60 hours, zen sellers -- who, it turns out, do exist after all -- sold about 950,000 zen (to clear all the orders ahead of mine). That's a little under 16,000 zen per hour.
Now, in a well-functioning market -- like the dil exchange a few weeks ago -- an order to buy at the market price would clear within seconds, normally fewer than two seconds. So 60 hours isn't good. The price cap is definitely constricting the trading volume.
But the idea that "nobody" is selling zen for dilithium is clearly bollocks.
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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Comments
That means making Dilithium more desirable by making things people want available for Dilithium.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
I think your right!
I'd be alright if they raised the CAP but not beyond 599:1. I admit today more people have, at least 8 characters they play and can refine more, so the Cap being increased makes sense... ...yet they shouldn't raise the CAP without first planning several new offerings that require Dilithium too!
It's why I suggested perhaps consider upgrading the Tier 3 Fleet Holdings out to Tier 4. As that wouldn't take as much updating to maps, just perhaps offer a few new things to unlock or buy with Fleet Credit & Dilithium as well once the Tier 4 was completed. Their are enough Tier 3, if they introduced those slowly every year or so it see some downward pressure for years.
Though I've always wanted to see a Ferengi Commerce Authority Holding, perhaps maybe where we could buy things with GPL as well as Fleet Credit's / DIL. But a new Holding take more time to plan and develope.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Ferengi_Commerce_Authority
The actual evidence in front of us is: people bought almost half a billion dilithium with zen on the exchange over the last two and a half days. That kind of vaporizes the purely speculative notion that nobody buys dil anymore. Someone's buying it, and they're buying it in huge quantities.
Now there's another half-billion dil up for sale. I find the idea that this fact has nothing to do with the existence of another half-billion dil -- which is what "supply doesn't matter" means -- puzzling. If the supply wasn't there, how would it be offered for sale?
The idea that the existence of a backlog is unrelated to the price cap is also one I find...puzzling. It boils down to saying: "Yes, for the entire existence of the exchange in the game, price changes were able to clear any backlogs...but now they can't, and that this has happened exactly at the moment the price hit the 500 dil cap is just a coincidence." I don't think it's a coincidence; I think it's a cause.
As I've written elsewhere, I'm all for measures to make dil more useful in the game -- even for long-time players who already have all the cool toys. That is certainly one of the things that would help to restore orderly trading to the exchange. But I am ... well, I'm going to stick with "puzzled" ... I'm puzzled by claims that this is the only thing that could help.
The fact remains though that raising the cap is a very temporary solution (sometimes even as short as a few minutes) because the value disparity between the two currency values is so high. The zen that is flowing on the market right now is extremely unlikely to be a few people purchasing huge amounts of dil, it is almost certainly an artifact of so many players cycling through the game in a day who come up short on dil for something and don't want to wait for tomorrow or whatever to refine more so they buy what is needed on the market.
In this case impatience outweighs the fact that they are overpaying for dil, but if the cap was raised they would quickly go to buying it at higher cap rate since it is also undoubtedly still seen as a less than equitable ratio and still driven by impatience rather than value.
Yeah, I just stopped reading, this thread feels like a big argument against something literally no one ever said. I'm sure it's just an error in communication as opposed to a disingenuous intent, with all the threads on this topic I think things are starting to get a bit muddy.
It would be nice if the same people would stop making threads on the same topic over and over again.
The further the two currencies get out of sync the harder it is to try and get them to reasonable levels. And there is a point where neither side would think it worthwhile to put either currency on the market.
This is the result of years of neglect of dilithium as a currency in making it desirable to have to get items you want. Remember it started to trade at 1:50 not 1:500. For too long it has largely only been for fleets and whatever they do with it. And yes the dil generation has also increased, but that would not matter much if there was more to do with it.
The OP ignores one potential issue, though. Dil sellers cancelling their sales. How often does that happen? No idea. It is entirely possible that 500000 zen worth of dil went up and came down without actually changing hands. Why would that happen? I don't know, but it is a possibility.
A free market economy only works were there are definite self-limitations and market corrections caused by real living needs, and those limitations do not exist in a virtual environment like a game. Much of "economics 101" simply do not apply in a virtual setting.
That is especially true when the "old timers" kept telling the new players out of habit that it was a lost cause and use some other method that they suggest to get what they want instead. And the cynical side of people just loves to keep the snark going like that so it continues even when it theoretically should have corrected itself.