You realice that the higher crafter recepies will eventually require crystal and cluster to make? This only affect the growing crafter population and not to a grand extend. Also the bot may have a big chunk of the markert because like you said some people rather buy them than gather them, for whatever the reason. There are also abilities that let you gather shard/crystals/cluster faster and the bot dont use them. If SE make the shard gathering even faster the bot will benefit too of it and the market will probably sell them for 1gil.