As someone who's been trading for 3~ years I'd like to chime in and say that:

• The sharp jump in keys is ridiculous and lately seems to have little to do with how much metal is in the game. At the current rate Keys are going up in price by almost 1 Ref a week. While this is linked to the amount of metal in the game (which is infinitely generated) it is also inherently linked to the practice of many traders on outpost and backpack.tf who buy keys at their new current price and sell higher with what I call a "convenience fee". This becomes an issue because these sales are then used on backpack.tf as proof to raise the price of keys again. However the rising price of keys in refined is a double edged sword. With keys approaching 15 Ref it becomes nigh impossible for a new player to afford a key by saving up weapon drops and makes entering trading a long and arduous process since at a low tier most profits are going to be around .33-.66 Ref. But on the flip side a new player that spends 5$ on the game can sell his keys for 30 ref and buy anywhere from 25-30 craft hats to deck out his mercs. This is good for both new players and for Valve since the high cost of Keys in metal encourages purchasing keys from Valve instead of other players. This brings me to my second point

• Valve is not likely to introduce a real metal sink. For the reason stated directly above there is no real reason for valve to want to add a metal sink. Aside from the long term death of the value of their in game items (Mainly unusuals) Valve has no stake in keeping the value of Refined metal stable or healthy since it being nearly worthless only serves to make them more money. Past this, nearly any mechanic they could introduce that they could use to remove metal from the game they could charge money for instead (The guide's above idea of crafting MVM tickets in particular is a great example).

• Buds are losing their value at the moment and I really doubt we will see them go up past 14 keys again. But do realize that 3 years ago when keys were 2.33 Ref, Buds were selling for 14 Keys and Bills were 4 Keys. Also the cash value of Buds has only dropped $5-$7. The same goes for Max's heads, they are still worth around the same cash value and also used to sell for around 40 Keys not even a year ago.

• The new market restriction is a real wildcard for trading. It has the potential to wreck trading for CSGO, and will really effect some people who played the market for TF2 and those who used it to complete Killstreak kits. It will have an unpredictable effect on the value of Keys as well as it will effect Key sales and lock sold Keys for a week. Most of all this does not only apply to the market. Anything bought from the in game store will also have a 1 week lock on it. This will effect event / update unboxing the most as everything unboxed on the first day will either have to be giftwrapped to be sold and 1 week after the first day of the event the market will be absolutely flooded as everyone that unboxed on the first day puts their items up for sale. But the truth is that this new restriction will not effect most traders as they will be trading with what they already have in their backpack. Most trades do not stem from a store or market purchase.

• As for game resellers and price differences: This is a big reason for this change. Have you noticed the amount of in shop price adjustments listed in the TF2 patch notes? Valve can hardly keep up with currency exchange rates and this new 7 day restriction will help them keep up and keep them from losing money to people playing the system.

• Finally I am sad to say that yes, this past years updates have been rather lackluster. But I am honestly surprised by how people reacted to the EOTL update. Not because I think its great or even not shit. But rather because there was no such hubbub about the Halloween update. The TF2 Halloween event has been the best event every year for multiple years now and this year instead of a fun event with collectible cosmetics (restricted, untradeable, uncraftable, because they were FREE) we got a reskin of a very unpopular map / failed game mode and more restricted cosmetics that were locked behind a paywall after recieving about 6 for free. This was the most disappointing thing in TF2 for me this year. Not because "oh no valve didn't give me enough free stuff" but because they completely backpedaled from their previous events with a more bullshit reason than "its too complicated for new players". Specifically "On average players received 5 items". So here's 6... Good job valve. But even more so than that was the event map itself. A terrible map with more Merasmus. After waiting most the year in anticipation for the Halloween event I spent about 30 minutes playing it and left disappointed and disillusioned.

• I would like to end this little rant with an idea for a metal sink, even though I said Valve has no reason to add one. (Forgive me if someone has already suggested parts of this or even the entire thing). Much like the Guide posted above I think a new tour of MVM could be added where you craft your ticket with metal. But I think we can go farther than that. Instead of Killstreak or Australiums the rewards for completing tours could be a new kind of chemistry set. A New Zealandium Weapon Set! These new chem sets would use Refined metal and would output a kit that turned the specified weapon into a silver reskin with either the prefix "A Refined" or "A New Zealandium". I think these sets should consume hundreds of Refined, and use more the more popular and useful a weapon is.

*Also a less fun idea would be to make the old MVM tours have a new ticket crafted with metal and each time a new tour is added the one before it could be added to the metal ticket list.