I see a lot of complaints about the energy market in trade chat, and all I ever think about when I see these complaints is "why would I want your crowns". It's a serious question that I'm positing to the forums, and I think that if there was a good answer for higher tier players, there would be more favorable CE prices. I don't see a reason for me to cover video game economics here; that's been done to death in other threads, but for me personally, crowns have no value.
Think hard about what you can do with crowns as a player. You can buy recipes with them, you need some to craft items, and other than that you can trade them with other players. What do you think would happen if a player already had the recipes they wanted, and had no items that they wanted to craft in the short term? That player has practically no need for crowns. However, to play this game for more than the prescribed amount of time each day, that player will need to obtain CE. That player is now in a situation where, to him, crowns do not have value beyond their trade in value, and CE does have value.
In fact, the value of CE may have increased to this player, because now the only way for him to advance his character is to get UV items to replace the gear he has, and trades for UV items generally take place in CE, not crowns. Now picture this player as several hundred players that have been around long enough to be wearing 5* gear, and the increases in CE prices make sense. This game needs a serious way to spend crowns to advance your character, and without it there's no practical limit to how high the price of CE will go. I've got ideas, and I'm sure others do as well, but I'd rather leave that for another post.
Auction House?