The Biggest CS2 Market Crash Explained

5 Covert skins can now be exchanged for knives or gloves using the CS2 trade up contract. Learn more here.

Recently, 23rd October, 2025, Steam has released an update that has affected CS2 and caused one of the biggest CS2 market crash in recent history.

What Happened?

23rd October 2025 was marked with an update affecting CS2 that mentioned two things. From now on:

1. 5 StatTrak Covert items can be exchanged for one StatTrak Knife from a collection of one of the items provided.
2. 5 regular Covert items can be exchanged for one regular Knife item or one regular Gloves item from a collection of one of the items provided.

In other words, 5 Covert (red) items can now be exchanged for one knife, thus causing CS2 knife prices to drastically go down and causing a CS2 market crash.

After the update, many players have started panic selling their skins: even knife skins (pretty much any variation of the Huntsman Knife, for example), that have not been sold in huge quantities previously have shot up in sale volumes from less than 5 to hundreds.

Is This CS2 Market Crash the End of CS2 Skin Trading?

This is one of the biggest CS2 updates and CS2 market crash ever. If we consider the wider implications of this, 5 StatTrak red items can now be exchanged for one knife or gloves. Since knives are also tradeable, this may spell the end of CS2 skin trading as we know it.

According to some players, from now on, every single skin in the game is likely to drastically go down in value because of this update. Think about it: if you can trade up 5 R8 Revolver skins to one knife or even gloves, what does this mean for CS2 skin trading?

I can’t not think about the players that had Covert-quality items stashed in their inventories either: they are likely to skyrocket in value because Covert-quality items would be necessary to mount a trade up for a knife. And since such tradeups only require 5 Covert-quality items, the price of one Covert-quality item, no matter what it would be, is likely to shoot up to the stars. There was news that a Russian streamer had already crafted a Butterfly Knife | Gamma Doppler (Emerald) by using 1$ and 10$ Covert-quality skins.

Back in the day, one of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive YouTubers named McSkilled made a similar video (trading an AUG | Chameleon up to a knife as a prank), and now, such things are a reality; all the money that used to be winded up in CS2 knives is now likely to be gone since knives are no longer rare at all.

Now, people who want to play with CS2 knives in CS2, will now just use 5 Covert-quality skins and trade them up to a knife.

Conclusion

The most recent CS2 update has caused quite the ruckus in the Counter-Strike community. Starting today, five covert-quality (red) skins can be exchanged into a knife through a trade-up contract.
It remains to be seen what’s to come out of this update in the long run, but for now, don’t panic, and most importantly, stay safe online by making use of data breach search engines like BreachDirectory.com.