Kind of? But that’s not completely how things like sports gambling work. In sports betting, you are not competing against the “house”, the folks who set up the sports book. You’re competing against other gamblers. (If you left it so that your book paid -110 odds (which is typical for 1:1 odds on a sports book) on any win or loss bet, your book would be out of business in a few days.) Any decent fan of, say, the NFL, can probably pick games “straight up” at a 65% clip or better.
So books use the point spread system, which uses bets from the public to move the point spread line back and forth in such a way to try to get 50% of the bets on one team, and 50% of the bets on the other team. And then the book actually doesn’t care who wins or loses the game, they make their money on the vig – the typical approximate 10% of each bet that goes to the house and is deducted from all winnings before they’re paid.
So yes, if you bet on the Chiefs and I bet on the Rams, you’re hoping that things outside your control that are favorable for the Chiefs will take place, and I’m hoping the same for the Rams. But the big unseen part of our bets is that we’re actually competing against each other, and the degree of how many good things that need to happen for either team is a sliding number set by the amounts bet by gamblers who bet on the team you bet on competing against gamblers who bet on the team I wagered on.
Tim_N
3345
You’re right of course, and you just did a great job reinforcing my original point. Regular gambling is much closer to crypto gambling than some people realise: in both cases your ‘wins’ come directly from the losses of other gamblers.
Wallapuctus was arguing upthread that since money made on bitcoin is taken from other people’s losses on bitcoin (i.e. zero sum game), everyone who makes money on crypto is a predator, and I was just pointing out that this implies all people who gamble is a predator.
I imagine this is true for a definition of “predator” where someone is eaten/loses?.
I invest in companies that I hope are growing through the sales of products or services that other people or companies have chosen to pay for, at a rate which makes sense to them. I would imagine that the growth of such a company and the value of its shares is a net positive for everyone.
Crypto… isn’t that.
Putting aside moral evaluations for the moment, one thing following crypto has reminded me of is that the vast majority of people out there, even smart people, do not understand the difference between zero sum and positive sum games.
In particular, most people don’t understand the difference between a bunch of people placing their money on bets (a zero sum game) and a bunch of people investing money in a stock market (overall a positive sum game, since that money goes to creating goods and services people want, creating an on the whole positive rate of the return over time.) To most people, “casinos, the stock market - it’s all just gambling.”
Tim_N
3348
Interesting, most of my anecdotal experience is that people view the stock market as an investment (which sortof implies a positive sum game) and the danger is that people see crypto as an investment as well. Whereas in reality there is zero difference between crypto and unregulated gambling. Crypto can be a very lucrative (or disastrous) and fun way to gamble, but there’s alot of misinformed people out there that see it as the ‘future of money’ and a legitimate investment.
I have found the best way to deprogramme crypto enthusiasts is to ask them why any supposed utility or future potential benefit of cryptocurrency has to be tied to an asset that fluctuates in value?
Can you imagine a world where bitcoin/ethereum/etc. was close to a fixed price asset (i.e. similar to how stablecoins operate today)? The whole space will be teams of nerds working in companies trying to develop blockchains to the point that they can beat traditional payment gateways / ledgers in the real world, and that’s all it would be. It would be great.
What also annoys me are the cryptobros who keep spouting nonsense like “cryptocurrency will enable financial inclusion of the poor people in third world countries”. No, it won’t. Cryptocurrency doesn’t magically allow poor people to access financial services. That’s mobile banking and other kinds of technology, nothing that absolutely requires crypto to function.
I’m on Molly side of this discussion.
Here is the thing, back the mid-1800 lots of peoples thought snake oil was medicine. Actual Chinese snake oil, and many of the miracle cures, did work some of the time for some of the people. They contained medicinal herbs that help relieve inflammation, often they had alcohol or opium the numbed the pain, and finally the placebo effect is very powerful. So when Joe bought Dr. Smith Miracle Exler, and his back or stomach pain went away. Dr Smith would tell hey Joe if you sell 10 bottles to your friends I’ll give you I’ll give you one free. So I’d argue that even though Dr. Smith was fraud, Joe wasn’t bad person
Cyrpto is the snake oil the 21st century. But we are fairly old wise men back in the 1850 and some of us are actual doctors. So it is relatively easy for us to figure out it is a scam. Still, I’ve been watching and learning about crypto from the periphery for the better part of the decade. I’m 100% convinced that Bitcoin will never replace the $ , Euro, or RMB. My confidence that cryptocurrency/Blockchain/NFT/ICO etc are all fraud has ranged from 75-95%. There is always been at least a 5% chance I’m wrong. I’ve felt the FOMO and wondered if missing out on the next big thing.
If was in my twenties, there is no question I would have invested in crypto probably reasonable early,
I was an actual programmer back then, and reading 50-page coin white paper is something I would do. So would I have become a Molly Wood, or a crypto bro (minus the toxicity) is an open question?
Also you can’t argue with the success, Bitcoin has gone from $13 to $30,000 in ten years. So logically it has to be good for something, right?. If you are Gen Z, and you took the advice of your parent or your Gen X friends and stayed clear of crypto, you look pretty stupid at parties.
100% Agreed. I certainly don’t see myself donating to “I lost my house went BTC went to $10,000” GoFundMe campaigns
Noman
3351
The part I quoted was pretty clear on its own about what you meant, and it doesn’t matter if you add even 20-30% third party credit fees for the cases where one can’t directly work with VISA or MasterCard, the volatility of BitCoin makes all that irrelevant.
And as for your comment about the sellers adding safeguards against volatility (or selling the payment bitcoins), the same problems apply to the buyers too. They’d be crazy to use bitcoins from their wallet to make a purchase, when at the end of the day the bitcoin may be 10-15% up. If they also have to buy bitcoins first from USD, and then immediately use those bitcoins to make the purchase, then there are many better ways to go around Paypal, VISA, MasterCard shenanigans, compared to doing these nonsensical transactions, and which in US also means filling out 8949 and 1040-Schedule D, for reporting the bitcoin sales/transfer just for an unrelated online purchase.
It’s quite simple really. Price volatility in Bitcoin, Ethereum and most other crypto currencies makes them completely ill-suited as legal means to buy and sell things.
Scuzz
3352
At least if I bet at a casino I can get free drinks.
Isn’t the other way around? I heard the fees are pretty high right now in crypto.
There’s not just a fee for processing the transaction.
Card acquirers will put fiat in your account but there’s a fee for getting your money out from crypto.
The thing is, that is what Bernie Madoff basically told every one of his new, prospective clients for years.
I think this is right on, especially as an alternative to credit / debit card transactions. The volatility is far higher than any credit card transaction fee would be.
Timex
3358
One person TRADING WITH THEMSELVES.
Though for the most part it’s too late for everyone else… like all Ponzi schemes MLM’s.
Funny how this keeps happening:
I think it’s hilarious they claim “millions worth of NFT’s stolen”. Try “pennies worth of NFT’s stolen”.
Timex
3363
Yeah it’s like if I had a bag of sand, and personally valued each grain at a million dollars.
If you steal my bag of sand, you haven’t stolen gazillions of dollars. You stole a worthless bag of sand.
