Your casino comparisons don't work for my suggestion, DoA. In a casino, you can't buy or acquire a bunch of casino chips, hang onto them for a while, then have some of them increase in value a hundred-fold, and cash them out. How would a casino's bottom line be affected by this?
I realize MA doesn't make money simply from deposits; I'm sure a good deal of their income comes from decay being repaired. That doesn't matter in my example, as that doesn't take huge-markups-followed-by-sales-and-cashing-out into account.
Thing is that those money were deposited by someone first... example:
Player 1 deposits 100,000 PEDs.
Player 2 deposits 100,000 PEDs.
Player 3 deposits 1,000 PEDs.
Total money in game (deposited but not belonging to MA): 201,000 PEDs.
Total profit for MA: 0 PEDs.
Player 1 cycles his 100,000 PEDs, loses 20,000 PEDs, remains with 80,000 PEDs.
Player 2 cycles his 100,000 PEDs, loses 10,000 PEDs, remains with 90,000 PEDs.
Player 3 cycles his 1,000 PEDs, breaks even, remains with 1,000 PEDs.
Total money in game (deposited but not belonging to MA): 171,000 PEDs.
Total profit for MA: 30,000 PEDs.
Now player 3 got an item that has a TT value of 100 PEDs, but the other players value it at 50,000 PEDs.
Player 3 sells his item to player 1 for 50,000 PEDs; now player 1 has 30,000 PEDs, player 2 has 90,000 PEDs, Player 3 has 51,000 PEDs.
Total money in game (deposited but not belonging to MA): 171,000 PEDs.
Total profit for MA: 30,000 PEDs.
Player 3 decides to cash out his 51,000 PEDs.
Total money in game (deposited but not belonging to MA): 120,000 PEDs.
Total profit for MA: 30,000 PEDs
How was MA's profit hurt by the transaction between player 1 and player 3, followed by player 3's withdrawl?
The only one that "lost" is player one, that paid 50,000 PEDs for an item whos TT value was (and still is) 100 PEDs, but which he valued at 50,000 PEDs.