Why are people rewarded for cheating?

[Catwho]

There seem to be two groups of people in this thread:

1. Those who have figured out how the XIV economy works, have made their millions, and are puzzled that others complain that the RMT bots are ruining the economy when the way to make REAL gil in this game involves no botting whatsoever.

2. Those who haven't figured out how the XIV economy works, and assume everyone in the first group is buying gil, botting, or some combination of the two.

Shards are the lowest common denominator in the economy. They've been stable at around 100-150 gil each on Lamia server for the last year. A friend of mine, who fits into group #1, figured out how to manipulate the lightning shard market and made six million gil by level 35. People will blindly buy the lowest priced crystals they can, and then other people will blindly trip over themselves to undercut, and if you go into the market with a little bit of up front capital and that knowledge, you can make millions, Wall Street style.

Any shard sold on the market board, regardless of where it was sourced, is being sold to a crafter, whose money likely came from other players. The only botters (or regularly players) that are artificially inflating the economy are the ones who are creating gil out of nothing- farming things to sell directly to NPCs.