unlikely

Good thinking, I better hurry and buy the SF Sandvich quick then.
Maybe the wrap will fall off at some point if you use it enough... ;-)

I know it is against the rules to advertise with links in your trades. But what about those that circumvent this restriction with their website as their name?

I once reported that, but he's still active. If that kind of advertising is allowed, what's to stop me from creating (lots of) Alt accounts, becoming a donor and then advertise my website with (hard to proof) fake trades? (not implying that that is the case below)

http://www.tf2outpost.com/user/163944
http://www.tf2outpost.com/user/255251
http://www.tf2outpost.com/user/121246 (although inactive for some time now)
(all from the same guy)
There are others, maybe less obvious, but the above are only an example.

Full disclosure: I had a rather ugly argument with the site owner at his blog a while back about his legitimacy, manners and double standards (but not started by me, imho).

I get it, I misread your comment. I read "I doubt you are right" lol

I really don't get what you mean, with the government argument.

And if you drastically increase the supply of one good ("real black and white paint"), where demand roughly stays the same, the price of that good, and what it's competing with ("old b/w paint"), will rapidly decline. Why should anything else ("the paint market") be affected?

I didn't mean to say he was the only one selling, just that you don't have that many options... for various reasons. Anyway we clearly disagree...
My point is, why should we discourage price discussions for everyone just to keep the "spam" away. If you price your stuff reasonably, you won't have a problem, I never had. If you create a trade where a lot of people feel the need to discuss, that should be your problem and not the mods. (unless that turns into spam or harassment)

Sometimes the next seller is not an option, have you considered that? Not every trade is done with commodities.

A free market can only truly evolve and be efficient if you are allowed to discuss the price and negotiate. The thing with this rule is, that you never now when you cross the line of negotiations into forbidden "discussion of prices".
Troll trades and pointless discussions already fall into the invalid trade and spam rule, imho.
And that's why I would very much appreciate to disallow blocked people from posting in your trades.

And the reason you cannot set a fixed price / conversion rate for keys like you can for metal (and weapons and tokens) is, because you can't convert one into the other with certainty, like you can with paper money into coins and back.
Keys are a commodity and are pretty much down to Supply and Demand (and arguably speculation, hoarding)

This gives a little scientific insight: http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/

I have to disagree, the price for Keys is going up, not the value of metal down. The recent runaway price of keys cannot be explained with so many more people playing TF2 in such a short period of time. If it was true that metal is being devalued, why then do the items we trade for metal not jump in prices in the same way Keys do?