I'd agree they shouldn't get into CDS and other esoteric instruments, and I also would put crypto investments in the 'esoteric' bucket.
Do you have a source for this? I feel like some details are lacking.
The tldr is that they bought credit default swaps for debt owed by Codere SA, and then offered the company financial assistance to restructure with the requirement that they pay their existing debt late to trigger a default.
He discusses the morality of this particular issue, as part of a discussion on a proposal for the SEC to regulate it, here: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-12-16/the-se...
Basically, Levine's argument is that as a result of these sorts of shenanigans, one giant investment fund (in this case, I guess, Black Rock, though again I don't know about this specific instance) gave money to an actual company that was employing people and doing something in the real world and that was in some kind of financial trouble. And it did that because it wanted to make even more money from some hedge fund somewhere, sure, but look at who was harmed (a hedge fund that was in the business of buying and selling Credit Default Swaps) and who benefited (a real company with a whole bunch of employees who would otherwise be laid off, and another hedge fund that was in the business of buying and selling Credit Default Swaps) and I'm not sure that the whole thing is that bad?
Something happens that harms some party, the event is studied and regulations are sometimes updated.
Let's say the option expires worthless. You make money having done nothing but collect my premium.
I take the option, and because it's positive gamma, when it goes up I make money, and I flatten. When it goes down, I'm short, and I make money and buy. I keep doing this buying low and selling high until I've made more than the premium.
---EDIT
My point is there can be reasons for both sides to do the trade. Nobody needs to be "harmed". The line of reasoning that says one of you must lose misses the point. If you buy insurance, either your house burns down or it doesn't. That doesn't mean either you or the insurance company was harmed.
Each individual options trade is zero-sum (one side wins exactly as much as the other side loses, barring transaction fees), as is the total of all options trades.
The whole point of having financial instruments is that you can mix risks. Whether each individual one results in heads or tails is not actually the point, the point is entities can shape the risks they want to be exposed to.