CS:GO update wipes out over $2B in value

GAMING CHRONICLES 142

Raiden

and

Memento

Oct 24, 2025

Gaming Chronicles focuses on curating the latest crypto gaming news every week.

You will find the latest news, educational content, and game reviews.

TLDR :

BGA’s stablecoin and gaming report
CS:GO update wipes out $2B in market cap
Cambria introduces new Island NFTs

🗞️ NEWS

BGA’S STABLECOINS & GAMING REPORT

This week, the Blockchain Game Alliance (BGA) published its Stablecoin and Gaming Report 2025. Let’s get into some of the highlights:
In the report, they take the examples of Roblox (Rb) and Fortnite (Fn), making the point that stability matters because:
- It reduces cognitive load for players, creates predictable creator payouts (and so predictable business planning), and builds trust in the currency, which drives long-term engagement
Rb and Fn builders on the role of speculation:
- “…assets appreciating in value organically is acceptable, but designing around price speculation is not a viable business strategy”
Stablecoins can act as “neutral monetary rails”, allowing interoperability, programmable incentives, and predictable settlement schedules for builders/creators
A core challenge with traditional game tokens is auditability, as these systems aren’t built to answer how tokens were created, how they were spent, who touched them, and who used them. Blockchain provides this source of truth
On stablecoins and secondary item markets:
- “The goal is not to replace successful designs, but to formalize the secondary demand they already generate and to route it through safer, programmable rails.”
On existing (traditional) payment rails:
- They bring critical challenges when needing to balance global payment options, with operational, financial, and security risks
How stablecoins can function as an economic operating system:
- “a programmable, fiat‑denominated layer that improves margins, treasury performance, and how in-game economies actually run.”
  - On treasury management: “For studios with large, recurring ingame cash flows, this transforms liquidity management from a cost into an asset.”
- “Stablecoins are writing a new chapter in onchain UX, creating reliable foundations for teams to create value with confidence. ”
One of the major takeaways is the importance of abstraction: “Stablecoins work best when they are invisible to the player, but powerful for the economy”
The report concludes with additional information on the regulatory side, including how the Genius Act is changing the landscape, for instance. Something that doesn’t interest me too much, but is helpful information for any game builder
Overall, a very insightful report into what the future of stablecoins may look like, and how it can solve existing macro problems in gaming

NEW CS:GO UPDATE WIPES OUT OVER $2B IN MC

Just yesterday, CS:GO released a new item update that wiped out over $2 billion (~30%) of the total market cap of its skin economy. The update allows players to use the “Trade up Contract” to exchange 5 items of Covert Quality into a StatTrak Knife, a regular Knife, or regular Gloves
- Covert Quality items are the second-rarest skins that can be pulled from CS:GO cases (gacha boxes), and some of these items “were” significantly lower priced than the highest quality items in the ExtraOrdinary tier, including Knives and Gloves
- So, instead of paying $100s of dollars to buy the rarest Knife or Gloves from the market, players could now trade up 5 items of significantly less value for one (super) rare item
  - The market quickly corrected this inefficiency, as items of the Covert quality quickly spiked in value, and the prices of the rarest items quickly dropped (by 40-50%), as a supply increase was imminent
    - Quybeens: “This is like allowing 2 normal axies to breed a Mystic.”
    - It also seemed that the trade ban of 1 week, after you use a Trade Up Contract, got removed, so these new items can instantly be introduced to the market (i.e., traded)
  - CSFloat did some of the math and reported that there are currently 20M Coverts (excluding Knives and Gloves), and if all these were traded up (which is very unlikely), it would roughly double the supply of Knives/Gloves
    - Ryan Wyatt responded to this: “I think it actually has much less to do with supply shock than it does that they can, and will, unilaterally make dev decisions that can wipe billions in market cap”
  - SAC did some of the math, arguing that the market is oversold (with a 40 to 50% decline of Knives/Gloves), and it will settle to about -5 to -10% overall. He emphasizes that it’s not a crash, but just a correction
Scrolling the Reddit of the CSGO Market Forum provides a further perspective on how the investor-oriented skin traders are impacted. Reaction includes a mix of panic, market theories (on opportunities), and what this means regarding Valve’s stance on the future of skin trading
- Interestingly enough, it has a lot of parallels with the crowd that trades NFTs, but I guess we’re just more resilient to market swings
Overall, it appears that Valve's move was intentional and may set a precedent for future developments. After all, they are the ones who decide, and speculators aren’t too welcome
- But does crypto fix this? Not really, I’d say, only in very unique cases where governance is fully decentralized, and ruled by governance votes, plus enforced by smart contracts. Pretty much the games on the far right of the onchain spectrum

CAMBRIA INTRODUCES ISLAND NFTS

This week, Cambria introduced its new Island NFTs. Only a couple of days after its announcement (yesterday), the 3333-supply collection was minted on OpenSea for 0.1 ETH a piece. The Islands minted out within 3 minutes, and the team managed to raise 300 ETH, equivalent to around $1.2M
- The introduction of the Cambria Islands was paired with an article outlining the (future) mechanics of the NFTs. It’s a bold vision and a bold move to add a land-based collection, considering the history of these assets not only in crypto gaming, but also in some of the legacy MMOs
  - Lars Doucet, the “godfather of digital land”, published an article in 2021: “Land speculators will kill your game’s growth”. In the article, he goes into the mistakes of digital real estate, which include (from a very high level):
    - Asset speculation kills user growth (pricing out builders), how land doesn’t need to be “landy” (bound to real-world constraints), how builders get punished, etc.
    - TL:DR land integrations are rarely successful, even within legacy MMOs
So, today, we’re going to take a closer look at the role of Islands within Cambria (note: summarized):
- Islands “serve as evolving central hubs for trade, resource refining, defense, and governance, on top of its base Islet functionality”
- An Island consists of multiple islets (player-owned properties) on which “settlers” can build their own little worlds. Island holders collect taxes based on the production rate of the islets
  - Islets are a customizable and upgradeable space where players can build, farm, craft, raise animals, store, and transport, among other things. Essentially, creating a new farming sim loop on top of Cambria
- Islands have 5 tiers, which determine their size. Larger islands have more port capacity, can support guild activities, a higher renown weight, among other things
- The goal for Islands is to create multiple mini-communities of islets. Holders can attract settlers through building infrastructure, investing in resources, and implementing a more favorable taxing model
  - On top of this, there will be a metagame of wars and alliances
- An Island’s economic output (production) scales with player activity, victory rates, demand multipliers, and resource consumption
  - "Additionally, every Island must continuously consume resources to maintain its infrastructure”
- Upon sale (NFT transfer), a “Royal Audit” is triggered, a check that may result in partial loss of facilities or degradation of the island
- Islands introduce a new resource generation game of generating, transporting, processing, and distributing resources
- Each Island has a set of dynamic attributes based on upgrades made to the island, the community, among other factors
There’s more to the collection, but I will have to cut it off here due to this newsletter already becoming too lengthy. Overall, I’m mostly interested in how the Islands will affect guild dynamics, how it will attract new player types, and how it will change the economy of the game
Will Cambria be able to pull this off successfully? It’s hard to say. Lots of what is outlined has yet to be built. Furthermore, the game’s player base will need to scale significantly to fill up a good amount of these islands. Yet, I don’t want to underestimate this scrappy and resourceful team