Yeah there is a thread that tracks them and their ROI since the start or at various price points. And you are correct their current value and returns now are completely nullified by depo and withdraw costs as well as their inflated value. If they were still 1k ea or 10p a share at OG price they would be a good investment still, but at 3k ea they were bringing in only about 7% ROI a year, and now i think the shares are above 40p/4k a OG share, so dividends are worthless and only point in owning is to resell as it goes higher.
The major loss I am talking about is players ability to trade in person and have an easy store of value that everyone typically accepts, yet isnt straight ped. Now I personally have been affected by this morse-so than others given I run a rental service. So it makes renting out high value items much harder, low value items are still manageable but a bit more difficult than before yet it still affects everyone.
Mindark seems to be intentionally trying to make it harder for players to work together and be co-operative. The loot system doesnt allow it very well, the skill implants are so convoluted I would say they give players the false expectation they can cash out their skills if they want to quit, and with the removal of CLD's trading friends to borrow items or in my case rent is now orders of magnitude more difficult. The systems they are making are all only half complete. They dont allow for full free market interaction only 1 side, and it distorts the economy. I sincerely hope they plan on making it easier for players to safely do more than just sell. Not just for my own interests, but for the game as a whole because it is one of the major flaws of the games economy that drives a wedge between players.
Look at the recent egg NFT sales. A lot of players might have wanted to participate in the purchase, me included, but getting access to the crypto system they used was rather confusing. And I REALLY wanted to buy some shares in Mindark when it went public, but its practically IMPOSSIBLE for someone in the united states to do so, as it is on a very small exchange in sweden, which requires access to a swedish bank, which is really hard for americans to do because everyone in the world hates the IRS because americans get taxed where ever they are and where ever their money is, so a lot of countries just dont bother letting us open accounts because they dont want the hassle of dealing with the IRS and reporting to them. I know that there are always ways around these things, but my point is mindark made it very difficult for the largest part of their playerbase to not get involved with their IPO. I really hope this trend doesnt continue as we get closer to the UE5 update and launch on the epic games service.