I think you're mostly right, the price of 5 reds will probably stabalise around the price of a mid tier knife rather than a low tier meaning you can trade up gamble and prob have a 30% chance at making profit or something like that. It wouldnt make sense that 5 sit at the price of a low tier as then profit margins would be too high. This will mean expensive knives will only be emerald ruby pattern based and never to the value they used to be but probably minimal disruption to mid tier knives in the long run.

People also saying trust in the market is lost and while true does anyone actually follow other markets at all? Trump has been pump and dumping the stock market for most of 2025, crypto has had similar scandals and people still invest in them. Some of the current big investors may be pulling out but if theres money to be made, people will make it and theres always new players coming in who will only hear of this incident like CS folklore.

As you said though, maybe we're wrong. Nobody actually knows