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Comment by jLaForest | Hacker News Reader

An average of $31807 per person...

Average is meaningless for anything that isn’t a normal distribution. The median spend per account is probably like $100.

"The average is meaningless so here is a number I pulled from my ass."

while the specific illustrative example they gave may be ass-pulled, the point the parent comment is making is valid.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49733104

Comes out to about $100/month

Also, spend is different than wager if every wager might return money to be re-wagered.

It also could be inflated due to winnings being put back into another bet. A single dollar could be accounted for multiple times if used in multiple bets.

Not that I am saying that this number is ok, gambling is a net negative on any society.

I’ve traded over a million dollars of equity volume this year but my brokerage account has less than $50,000 in it. You can wager the same dollar more than once.

Some can.

The gross amount doesn't tell you how much money is being lost to gambling. I'm not going to soften that wording, it really is lost, but such a shocking gross amount means the average loss is in the thousands per year. Gambling is also the archetypal whale hunt. Your best customers are harmed most by your product.

There's nothing else that delivers that level of harm directly to a device in your pocket.

It's a long tail. The vast majority make $20 parlay wagers here and there and they're the real cash cow. And then there are the degens that make $2,000, or $5,000 wagers on everything because otherwise "what's the point?".

Short of outright banning (which I would favor), we can at least make mobile wagers capped at say $100 and the same account can't wager more that $500 within a 24 hour period.

That would allow people to have their fun but seriously limit the blast radius when they inevitably lose big repeatedly.

> The vast majority make $20 parlay wagers here and there and they're the real cash cow.

You got the meaning of "whale" wrong. The majority of the winnings / losings come from the "long tail" addicts.

> And then there are the degens that make $2,000, or $5,000 wagers on everything because [they are addicted]

I think my edit more accurately reflects what is going on.

You need to put more time into the proposal if you want to make it serious. How long would it take for people to learn they need "alt accounts" to gamble?

Suggestions:

1. Ban advertising of gambling.

2. Ban "remote" gambling including phone apps.

What would it take to make progress on this in the current regulatory environment? Post a link to someone who has thought about it.

> Ban "remote" gambling including phone apps.

So gambling will be limited to anyone with AnyDesk?

> What would it take to make progress on this in the current regulatory environment?

Banning cryptocurrency as a concept,

banning fantasy sports betting (shown as credits, settled in dollars in person or out-of-band),

banning Tor,

I could go on.

But the real lever would be to make it illegal! Which, it was, in many jurisdictions. Now it’s splashed all over every NFL broadcast, as you alluded to with your advertising portion.

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