Why do people keybank, can someone shed a light?

[AiR²³]

I can not really understand why people trade keys - ref - keys - ref...

 

For example if i start out with 30 keys and i want to buy keys at 14,33 and sell them at 14,66:

 

If i could sell 30 keys for 14,66, i'd end up with 439,8 refined.

 

If i could rebuy keys at 14,33 with those 439,8 refined, i'd have 30,69 keys.

 

Once more and i would have 449,9 refined.

 

Back to keys i'd end up with 31,3 keys.

 

I would have made 1,3 keys profit by selling a total of 60 keys and buying keys with 889,7 refined.

 

But how long does this take? A week? How fast is trading keys? Would it even matter if i start out with 30 keys or with 300? Is the volume of trades that big?

And what would happen if you go to sleep while your bot is banking and when you stand up, the price on bp.tf has risen so you can't rebuy for 14,33 any more?

Zero profit?

[comfortable]

It would probably be safer to trade manually if key prices are fluctuating, haven't been paying attention though. Keys being a main currency, they will be traded very often. I can safely assume that the profit will be worth it if you manage to make profit in regards to the 100 other traders doing the same thing.

[MusicalEclipse]

I would have made 1,3 keys profit by selling a total of 60 keys and buying keys with 889,7 refined.

I'll say the same thing about scrapbanking, craft hat banking, etc. For the amount of time and effort you'll spend banking, the profits aren't worth it. Could easily make a key or more in one trade flipping stuff like paints, wrap, etc.

[Gren]

Yup, that's exactly why key banking is retarded.  It's one of the shittiest ways to make profit and it's (in my belief at least) almost single-handledly responsible for the explosion of key prices in the last 3-4 months (yes, I've heard of Halloween unboxing madness and ref being useless).

[Scott Bakula]

In the past it was generally better as when key prices were lower, it'd take less flips to make a decent profit. Nowadays, there are better things to spend time on to flip.

[Hugeisno1]

Generally it's a low risk but low profit scheme. In the last few years keys have been constantly increasing in value. Only twice did they lose any significant value. It's safe and doesn't take much effort on your own part. and it's something you can do on the side to keep a stock of pure all the while gaining a bit of profit.

 

if the key's are fluctuating as they did last year it can land you quite a decent profit(For the effort involved anyways) but you're better off buying and selling items. 

For example
Let's say you had bought 30 keys last year on October 13th.( 30*9= 270 Refined). Had you kept those same keys for just two months and a day you could have sold those 30 keys for 14 Refined each. (30*14 = 420 Refined) landing you a nifty 55% profit for two day's worth of trading and 2 months of waiting.  Had you waited till the 25th of December that profit would have been 88% on your original investment.
The only thing you have to do on your part (other than buy and sell the keys) is to keep an eye on the price. Checking the key's classifieds every couple of days would be sufficient. Once it's reached a level you're happy with or if you think it's about to drop you sell them for whatever the lowest or second lowest value currently on the classifieds. Then you just wait for the price to drop again. Again this just means you should check on the price and classifieds every few days. Once it stabilizes again you can repeat the process. It's an alright system if you're not active all that often or don't want to trade every day, You're pretty much guaranteed to sell those 30 keys in a day as well so you won't get stuck with items that suddenly became unpopular or take days to sell off.


Pros           and       Cons
Safe             |       Low profit

Little Effort   |       Slow Growth


*Edit Think of it as a long term investment. You could sell all those keys in a day any day if you're willing to accept the price they're going for but waiting till the last moment will gain you more profit and lets you start again in a relatively shorter time. If you're trade savvy and have the time to trade you're better off just trading as per normal but it never hurts to keep some pure on hand in case an unforeseen deal comes along.