Mardi gras

1) I seriously doubt that.
2) What does that have to do with this?

1. Yes, they absolutely do. 1, 5, 10m mesos in comparison to 1,000, 10,000, 100,000 mesos is absolutely way more. Even if you farm envelopes in bulk 80% of the time you're going to walk away with 1k's. Also keep in mind that most of the people who get the red evelopes are casuals who just end up spending those mesos on potions and stuff. It doesn't go back into the economy. People buy mesos bags in bulk specifically for the free market, and there's no doubt that people are doing it or Nexon wouldn't keep trying to sell them. If there's one thing Nexon knows how to do, it's selling bullshit no one ever needs.

2. There's no reason for Nexon not to hold the red envelope event when they continue selling meso bags which are far more harmful. They're not aware of the ingame economy, anyway, so it's not like they've taken that into consideration. Those envelopes helped a lot of low level people - myself included - several years ago.