Superseded — historical record. This page records the 10 June 2026 regulator pivot. Since then, commission went to 0% (21 July 2026), memberships were removed (July 2026), and on 23 September 2026 all new paid commerce was retired: new orders, listings, offers, auctions, lots and checkout return 410, while existing agreements still settle. The current direction is open-source TCG data infrastructure; see the roadmap and fees. The commerce boundary is recorded in apps/storefront/docs/commercial-retirement.md (private repository). The text below is kept as last published (its commission line was already updated on 21 July 2026), with dated notes where it no longer holds.Cambridge TCG runs a marketplace. (2026-10-10: new paid commerce was retired on 23 September 2026; existing agreements still settle.) It also used to sell cards in that marketplace — a house ask on the sell side (retail spot) and a house bid on the buy side (trade-in credit), injected into every card’s order book. That made the platform both the referee and a player.
On 10 June 2026 we stopped playing. The platform is now a market regulator: it makes the market legible, publishes its rules and evidence, and holds no positions in it.
Where this lives in code. The order-book view atapps/storefront/src/lib/market/unified.tsno longer injects house rows. The retail checkout and trade-in desk are removed. A static guard,pnpm audit:no-house-listing, fails the build if the merchant shape returns. Full design:docs/superpowers/specs/2026-06-10-regulator-pivot-design.md.
| Before | After |
|---|---|
| House ask + house bid in every order book | The order book is purely peer-to-peer. The platform owns no asks and no bids. |
| Retail checkout (buy a card from CTCG) | Removed. The platform sells nothing. |
| Trade-in desk (sell a card to CTCG for credit) | Closed. You liquidate by selling to other participants on the market. (Superseded: new paid listings retired 23 September 2026.) |
| B2B wholesale ordering | Retired. |
| Profit = the spread (buy low, sell high) | Profit = commission on other people’s trades, published and capped. (Superseded: commission 0% from 21 July 2026; new paid commerce retired 23 September 2026.) |
A market maker profits from the spread between what it pays and what it charges. A regulator profits from the market working at all. These are different incentives, and only one of them is safe to combine with running the trust engine, the escrow, the fraud flags, and the price-reference feed. When the entity that decides your trust score is also bidding against you for the same card, every one of those decisions is suspect. Removing the house from the book removes the suspicion at its root.
The reference price you still see on a card page is exactly that — a reference, computed from the catalog and labelled as a price guide, not an offer. The platform will not sell you the card at that price, because the platform will not sell you the card at any price.
About £59,000 of inventory remains from the merchant era. It is never sold — selling it would re-enter the market we just left. It becomes the prize economy: raffles, mystery boxes, reward packs — each leaves a reproducible draw record and can later enter a Merkle digest. These records check consistency; server-only entropy does not prove non-selection. The regulator gives its cards away rather than competing with the participants it regulates. (2026-10-10: the £59,000 figure is as recorded on 10 June 2026; the current balance and prize use are not re-verified on this page.)
Every number above is inspectable. If you find the platform holding an ask or a bid in any order book, that is a bug and a broken promise — report it.
This commitment binds the Cambridge TCG operator entity. It does not constrain individual participants, who trade freely. (2026-10-10: new paid trades have not been admitted since 23 September 2026.) It does not apply to the platform’s role as builder of the software (a separate actor). The regulator is the operator of the venue, and it is the operator that has stepped out of the trading.