Cryptocurrency trading, stock market trading, sports betting, slots, and opening Pokemon card packs are all functionally "gambling".
However, people will generally only use the word for types of gambling they disagree with.
However, people will generally only use the word for types of gambling they disagree with.
Specifically, in a casino the odds are known and fixed in favor of the house. If I'm playing roulette at the casino and place $1000 on black, I have a less than 50% chance of winning (18/38) due to the two green spaces on the wheel. Over a long enough period of gambling the house will win and I will lose.
With stocks or cryptocurrency, things are very different. The odds are not known in advance, nor are they controlled by a specific organization. You can have a situation, particularly with stocks, where value is actually created and there is a net increase in wealth - this is not possible in traditional gambling, which is explicitly zero-sum.
I think it's mostly about how predictable the risk is. In a casino, the odds are stated and known. In stocks, (in the US) companies are supposed to file statements with the SEC to honestly report the risks to their best extent. With crypto, no one seems to have to report any risk evaluation.
I guess the other difference is that in casinos, the bet typically goes to zero faster than with stocks and sometimes crypto, as it seems rare that those will zero out, so people may not lose 100% of a bet but sure can lose 99%.
But I agree with OP, that it mostly depends on whether someone likes it whether they see it as gambling, less so in actual definitions of what gambling is.
For sure. If you had invested in Japanese stock market at its peak in 1989, you'd still be down more than 30 years later.
Indeed, Japanese companies have on the whole been profitable throughout that time and have passed on some of those profits to their owners, so value has been created.
The stock market bubble bursting didn't destroy value, it simply revealed that some investors overpaid
But maybe I'm missing the point you're trying to make.
Speculation, or the assumption of existing risk, or investing in creation with an expected return is not the same as gambling (which is 0 sum game and creates risk to shift money around).
That being said, in the real world today, this appears to be a distinction without a difference.
The real difference with traditional gambling is that there is no plan to ever end the game. As long as it continues, the players can believe they will come out ahead, even though if you stopped the game at any time, losses by people who didn't exit would match gains by people who did.
"The game ends now" values current holdings of Bitcoin at zero since there is nothing in the pot, but it's unclear if that will ever happen, and no sign that it will soon.
- For most bonds, the game ends at maturity.
- The money used for stock buybacks doesn't come from other shareholders, so that's not zero sum.
- Many companies have substantial assets, so they do have liquidation value.
However, it's true that most stocks trade far above liquidation value, under the assumption that the game will continue.
These are different things (yes, there is a qualitative difference).