Over the last 2+ decades gambling has increased massively. By "gambling" I include sports betting, prediction markets, online casinos and crypto (including NFTs). Yes, I'm including crypto under gambling. When ordinary people buy crypto it's mostly because they saw the stratospheric rise of Bitcoin, don't really understand why and don't want to miss out on the next Bitcoin.. Straight up. That's gambling.

But why? Ease of access (ie the Intenret and particularly smartphones) are obviously a factor. There was a time when if you wanted to gamble you had to do it illegally or you had to go to a physical casino in Las Vegas or Atlantic City (and then riverboats, etc). You can look across to see how ease of access to gambling absolutely increases the amount of gambling and thus gambling addiction. A good example are the poker machines that are available in some states in Australia but not all.

But there's something deeper than that (IMHO). And I think that thing is the increasing inequality [1] and the affordability crisis. People may be talking about affordability a lot now but it's not a new issue. It was a key issue in the 2016 election, for example.

The thesis is that as people become increasingly desperate to have enough money (and espeically if they fall below that level) then gambling increases because people see this as the only way they can get ahead (eg [2]).

I believe gambling is a symptomo and indicator of a deeply broken societ and a deteriorating society.

The sad reality is that gambling is an excellent way of extracting what little wealth poor people have and it makes everything worse on a macro scale. Gambling should be relatively inaccessible. Yet we have the Federal government suing to stop states to ban prediction markets [3].

[1]: https://wir2026.wid.world/

[2]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8643406/

[3]: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/21/where-the-feds-are-fighting-...

> The thesis is that as people become increasingly desperate to have enough money (and espeically if they fall below that level) then gambling increases because people see this as the only way they can get ahead

I have plenty of cash (let's just say over a half-mil), so well ahead of the poverty level. I find myself nearly falling into this trap often. I used to work in FAANG as a developer making big bucks and earning far more than I spend. I left FAANG a couple of years ago and now I feel like I'm just breaking even with the lower salary. Quality of life has improved, but I miss having that "cushion" in each paycheck, so I look to things like the stock market to determine if I can get ahead again somehow. The fact that the tech market is absolute trash right now makes me fear for my future which in turn drives this "gotta find a way to get ahead" line of thinking even more aggressively. It's definitely not just impacting the poor.

There's 3 kinds of crypto buyers: The investor, the criminal, and your weird libertarian uncle