Counter-Strike is a series of multiplayer first-person shooter video games published by Valve. Each player needs to have a Steam account to be able to play the game. In this account, the items wil be stored. In the game teams of terrorists battle to perpetrate an act of terror while counter-terrorists try to prevent it. The series began on Windows in 1999 with the release of the first game, Counter-Strike. The most recent installment in the series, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO), was released in 2012. CS:GO is a free-to-play game that has been played by over 30 million people worldwide. This is also where our investements take place.

Gaming cosmetics in CS:GO are items that can be used to customize the appearance of a player's weapons, characters, and other in-game items. Cosmetic items in CS:GO do not affect gameplay in any way. They are purely for aesthetic purposes. However, some players choose to collect cosmetic items as a way to show off their status or support their favorite teams. Cosmetics can be optained in different ways:

• Opeing Loot crates which contain specific skins of different rarity and value.
• Weapon skins can also be traded up to. This works by using skins of lower rarity of the same collection or case. There are ten skins of the same rarity needed to get a skin one rarity higher. Each skin gives a 10% chance to get its corresponding higher tier.
• Cosmetics can also be obtained as drops while playing the game or after attending or playing an official Valve event.

There are some key differences between traditional markets and the market for Counter-Strike cosmetics. Listed below are the most significant:

• Trade Hold

  The biggest problem and difference is that every item which gets to a new inventory gets a 8 Day trade hold. That means items can't be traded back and forth in reasonable time. This is why a long term view is essential for a profitable strategie in this market.

• Volume & Liquidity

  Because of the small size of this market, the volume is tiny. Except for a hand full of items, the volume and liquidity are rather small and therefore cashing out is a demanding process.

• Storage

  A normal Counter-Strike account gets a storage space of 1000 items. If those aren't enough, up to 100 extra units, each with size 1000k, can be bought. The problem with those units is, that each single item needs to be transfered into such a storage unit. That makes large orders of multiple thousand items a challenge. But this also creates a entry barriere which plays as an advanteg for us.