From Meme Coins to CSGO Skins: Speculation Never Sleeps

You may not have played CS:GO, but you must have a friend who has made some money with it, of course, it may have been a loss recently.

When the craze for Meme coins gradually subsided, some speculators who had been up and down in the surge and plunge of Meme coins turned their attention to CS skins and discussed the candlestick charts of CS:GO accessories in various currency speculation groups. The former "coin circle Meme hunters" have transformed themselves into "accessories losers", and CS:GO skins have become the next wealth code in their eyes.

CS:GO (Counter-Strike: Global Offensive) was officially released on August 21, 2012. In 2013, the weapon box and skin system were introduced and allowed to be traded on the Steam market. Since then, the foundation of the CS:GO accessories economy has been laid. After attempts to make it free and multiple updates, the accessories market has been prosperous for twelve years.

In May 2025, the CS accessories market suddenly collapsed, and the accessories index plummeted by 20% in three days. The prices of many popular trading products were nearly halved, triggering heated discussions among users on various platforms. This sense of market collapse is very familiar to cryptocurrency traders, except that this time everyone is holding "virtual gun skins".

Players who have been steadily happy because of the appreciation of skins will "no longer be happy" overnight.

The hyped market is fragile. How do these skins that look like NFTs and fall as hard as Meme coins attract their believers and what will they bring?

Making money is a piece of cake

In April 2025, the Meme coin market was tepid, but the CS:GO accessories market was in full swing, attracting the attention of many players in the coin circle.

It all started with the 2013 Arms Deal update, when skins (also known as "accessories," essentially graphic overlays that modify the look of weapons in CS) were introduced and could only be obtained as random drops in the game.

This ushered in the era of "opening a box is like a lottery ticket" in wealth games. In order to obtain rare skins that could not be opened, players gradually began to trade spontaneously. The rise of skin trading websites further promoted the prosperity of the market, giving rise to an all-encompassing prosperous ecosystem - players, trading platforms, anchors, "dog flippers," black markets, data tools, etc.

Even derived from the historical price K-line chart 

Source: CSGO STOCKS

But most of those who feel the ups and downs in the CS:GO skin market just play for fun at the beginning.

In 2019, Mantou was still in college. At first, the game was just a game. In his words: "After playing for a while, I want to buy skins", which is normal for players.

For CS:GO players, skins are not only a kind of decoration, but also a kind of social currency. High-quality or rare skins highlight the status of players in the community and satisfy their vanity. This naturally creates the demand for the circulation of accessories, and also breeds the corresponding market.

After learning more about this market, Mantou saw that the price of skins had risen sharply. In addition, he was just a college student with little money at the time, so he had the urge to "speculate on skins".

The amount of his first pot of gold was not large - "I made a few hundred yuan at the beginning, and I was happy for a few days."

Compared to making money specifically from skins, for Mantou, buying skins in the game and playing games are more like a complementary thing. He has not thought too much about trading strategies, "I just want to play, so I buy it for fun", but the fluctuations in the accessories market will also make him return to CS:GO. For example, in April this year, he returned to the pit because he heard that "accessories are very popular."

In fact, CS:GO and the accessories economy it created can indeed be said to complement each other.

The well-known KOL Hua Jiao once spontaneously studied the market economy created by this game out of curiosity. In his opinion, the long-lasting wealth effect of the CS:GO accessories market is inseparable from the attributes of the game itself.

"As a gunfight game, CS:GO's game mode is very simple and has not changed much since it was first developed." In addition, Valve (the developer of CS:GO) often uses activities to stimulate old players, which can attract old players to return quickly due to nostalgia or some other factors.

While being able to quickly attract or retain old players, the promotion of e-sports anchors has also lowered the threshold, attracting a steady stream of "new generation forces" (mostly college students) to enter the market, constituting the incremental growth of this market.

Vanity prompts players to trade skin accessories, and making money attracts a steady stream of new and old players to take the bait. Earning money while playing has become the best footnote to the CS:GO game and the accessories economy.

Let the price of accessories soar

The price range of the accessories market in CS:GO is amazing, ranging from ordinary skins worth a few yuan to rare treasures worth tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of yuan, which together constitute this unique ecosystem. It is like the stratification of currencies in the currency circle - ordinary skins are like "air coins", while top accessories such as dragon snipers and butterfly knives are comparable to BAYC and CryptoPunks in the NFT world. Their prices continue to set new records due to scarcityand consensus premium.

A large number of common weapon cases and ordinary quality skins are at the bottom of the price spectrum. For example, the "Snakebite" weapon case may only sell for about $0.36 (about RMB 2.5). These accessories are relatively easy to obtain and have a large supply, so they are affordable and meet the personalized needs of most player bases.

Entering the mid-price range, the price of accessories is usually between tens and hundreds of RMB. Accessories in this range often have better appearance designs, a certain degree of rarity, or serve more popular weapons.

Source: CSmoney

In the high-end market, prices are growing exponentially, with accessories costing thousands or even tens of thousands of yuan. These are usually extremely rare knives, gloves, and legendary or extremely rare top-level gun skins. A brand new "M4A4 | Howl" that can record kills and comes with rare stickers has a recommended price of $18,324 (about 130,000 yuan) on a second-hand platform.

Source: ShadowPay website article

These high-priced accessories have gone beyond the game props themselves and are regarded as a kind of collection and investment.

Overall, factors such as the appearance, wear, rarity, style, operation of accessories merchants ("reverse dogs"), student holidays, new product drops and even the anchor effect of accessories all affect their market prices. Platforms such as Steam's market and third-party trading websites have also played an important role in shaping the CS: GO skin market.

Even if the influencing factors can be rationally sorted out, the arbitrary price of accessories is still unexpected. This kind of arbitrariness is common in the CS:GO accessories market and the currency circle.

In 2023, when CS:GO announced that it would be upgraded to CS2, many high-priced skins and rare stickers saw price increases. However, just a few months later, CS2 was officially launched, and many skins fell sharply due to changes in display effects or adjustments to the drop mechanism. Many players who bought at high prices were "trapped". Similarly, the $TRUMP coin launched on the eve of Trump's inauguration was also once popular, but the price of the coin collapsed in an instant after he took office, leaving a mess.

However, the price changes and transactions of accessories seem to be as random and free as Memes, but in fact they are all under the control of Valve. The entire economic ecosystem derived from accessories must be adjusted according to the rules of the studio, and Valve has an absolute initiative in it.

Hua Jiao said, "It (Valve) regulates all probabilities and the rarity of each skin that pops up, and can tell you where to go." Even the display effect of the skin in the game will change due to the update of the game. "Why does CS2 have such a big impact on the price? Because Valve changed the display of some skins in the game, some look better, and some look uglier," said Mantou.

Accessories in CS:GO are financial products that can fly, but looking down, the string of this kite is always in the hands of Valve.

From an extreme point of view, the accessories market has the risk of "what if Valve updates tomorrow and skins cannot be traded freely". As Mantou said: "You cannot control the changes in Valve's policies, and NFT is easier to operate in this regard."

The story of the currency circle is repeated in the accessories market

The financial management attributes of accessories and their price changes have made many people in the crypto circle sigh-"Isn't this NFT!"

This is not nonsense, and even the "earning while playing" effect it inadvertently achieves coincides with the "play to earn" pursued by GamFi design.

Although CS:GO accessories can be used in the game, which constitutes a difference from NFT in practicality, Mantou said that "some expensive ones are indeed good-looking", but in fact this is only a small part.

"Skins have no function, and they don't even add three points of attack power." For the vast number of young players, accessories carry more complex psychological needs and social significance. They are the concentrated embodiment of the pursuit of appearance, face culture and identity symbols, which is similar to the role played by NFT in some circles.

Professional jewelry trading websites such as Jbskins.com, when describing a max gold print of the 2022 Antwerp Championship, also pointed out that it is "not just a simple sticker, but also a symbol of identity." "Although it cannot improve your skills, it can definitely improve your gaming experience and face."

In addition to the social identity symbol attribute, the two also have similarities in price driving factors.

Hua Jiao said that the price of specific accessories on CS:GO will increase due to the celebrity effect used by anchors and e-sports players, while NFT is mainly a symbol of identity, and (the price) also needs some celebrity effect to lead.

Celebrity endorsements brought by superstar purchases can drive up the NFT floor price, with prices soaring a hundred or even a thousand times in a short period of time. However, once market sentiment changes, liquidity tightens, or negative news appears in the project itself, the NFT price may plummet in a short period of time, causing heavy losses to high-level buyers.

More coincidentally, after the collapse of CS:GO accessories, the currency circle and Meme market quietly warmed up again. Ethereum, which has been silent for a long time, rose nearly 40% in 7 days, breaking through $2,500, and old coins such as $PEPE, $PNUT, and $MOODENG have warmed up one after another. Some people even speculate that funds circulate between different virtual assets, forming an alternative "blood-sucking effect". Although it cannot be directly proved, this coincidence of capital flow has become a topic of conversation in the currency circle community.

Opportunities and risks always go hand in hand. Before May, CS:GO players who had been stable and happy for a while ushered in this unprecedented price drop.

Mantou's previous 50,000 yuan earned from the appreciation of accessories was wiped out overnight and turned into a loss of 70,000 yuan. Talking about his views on this decline, he, who has "played too much in the currency circle", seems very calm. He believes that compared with the previous "blunt knife cutting meat" and generally no decline in trading volume, this wave of decline is so large, and the trading volume is quite good. If the accessories market can attract more attention and slowly recover, it should be a good thing.

After all, from Meme coins to CS:GO accessories, the story of cyber speculation will never end. Markets, emotions, greed and fear are always reincarnated in different tracks.

The only thing that remains unchanged is that financial freedom is always out of reach, and there will always be people who take over at high positions.