Bitcoin Forum

Well, sort of, at least for the majority of ordinary and wannabe traders. It is relatively easy to earn money on a rising market but it becomes a completely different matter when a sideways market sets in like it is now in the cryptoverse. There are two major factors that turn trading into gambling for most players in this type of market which are presented below.

First, in any financial or speculative market, where Bitcoin rightfully belongs to, you can earn only if you take money from someone else. It could appear as if everyone earns with the rising price but things reveal their true nature when the price stops rising. It is kind of obvious but accepting this is necessary to understand why you can be the one losing the game in the end.

Second, some market participants have an unrestricted edge over the rest of the pack which means that under no circumstances they will be losing. These are arbitrageurs, insiders, exchanges and their likes. For example, it is impossible to beat exchange since it is 100% sure money for them when they can front run your orders and do a lot of other nasty things which you can't.

Given these two circumstances, it is easy to see that if you do not belong to the group of market participants mentioned above, trading pretty quickly turns into gambling for you. So your only chance to win is pure luck. But luck is not a friend of consistency, therefore the only consistency you can reliably expect is losing to someone who has an undisputed edge over you and the market.

Feel free to comment and post your thoughts and ideas here.

I have experienced shady exchange practices first hand back in the early days. In my cases it was on Mintpal and Cryptsy. The issues were Bitcoin deposits not posting during a massive crash of a certain altcoin, where the deposits posted exactly at the moment the market was bought up again. Disabling deposits and withdrawals of coins with massive spreads accross various exchanges, where everything was enabled again once the spread was gone. Orderbook manipulation where the orderbook adjusted itself based on how I was modifying a buy or sell order before I even executed the order. Altcoins that suddenly got dumped down massively, where a few minutes later the exchanges announced that they will be delisted -- this is something Poloniex has done last year as well. Overall, great analysis!

Your analysis is quite spot on but at least you have lesser chance to lose money when trading. You can lose all your money instantly when you are gambling. On the other hand, you will only lose all of your investment on trading if you failed to get out on time or when exchanges close. Most of the times, you would only lose a percent of it but not all. Still, it doesn't change the fact that you take money from someone else when you profit from a trade.

In a way trading could be considered gambling, but there a lot of different variations in gambling risk. What I mean is that some gambling games are completely games of chance like dice where there is no skill involved. But there are also games where skill is a factor such as in poker.

You can argue that risk in trading is lower if you are skilled at reading charts and if you do research on the coins you are trading. You may even be able to say that if you are highly skilled, trading may not really be gambling.

I tried trading twice back in 2016 and "lost" 1 Bitcoin in total. Thats a lot, if you consider the last ATH. Not everybody is a born trader  :D

I would say that trading is not gambling. I think when we do trading then we can still do an analysis that can help us to take decisions, while playing trading then fully we hope to luck. Everyone must have a difference of opinion and I think it is fair. if calculated maybe only 30% of people who consider trading as a gambling.

Indeed we can consider trading as gambling since it is tough to predict just like gambling. We cannot tell if we are going to have profit or not because the market table is somehow difficult to analyze. However, even though they are near to be like to each other still there's a big difference between the two because gambling is more risky compared to trading. Furthermore, gambling is all about luck while trading is more on analyzation.

trading is a buying and selling process can not guess the price to come while gambling is predicting the price so bitcoin is not fully said gambling, bitcoin like we buy and sell goods in the market, it seems if you say bitcoin as a gambling place then you are wrong.

well gambling has a clear definition. it is something that you can not predict at all. it is 100% pure chance. for example when you roll a dice or flip a coin there is no way to know what the result of it will be. meaning pure chance.

but when it comes to trading and prices, it is hard to predict but it is not 100% unclear. you can expect certain scenarios to happen with different levels of certainty based on the market situation. and that is a big difference that makes it distinguished from gambling.

Yep as another business with money behind everything there is always a big bet for the future with the purpose of winning the deal with the other party.

Trading is always gambling and people espousing TA aren't much different from weirdoes who devote their lives to coming up with mathematical formulas they believe work on horse racing.

It's true that the real men are forged in sideways markets. We're nowhere near inert though and I don't think this current action can be called sideways when 10-20% can be gained or lost in a day. Try weeks of $250.

Again wrong. Trading bitcoin is extremely easy after 5 years of doing it. All I have to do is buy when I see a certain amount of volume on a big drop. Its not like ordinary trading where you have to make your wins bigger than your losses. In bitcoin I always win. Yes it is alot harder once the bear market really sets in. I tend to stay out during this time. Within a few weeks I will be finalizing all my withdrawals (into a ratio of cash and bitcoin) and you wont see me probably until the next halving.

If having risk considered as gambling then it can be, but in trading its our own decision matters, some says it is like we bet on such coin and will win if that arise in value which impact, we can earn or win in it by just trading it and buying more coins, it depends on once perspective but I still prefer trading at all.

I would like to mention that even for exchanges ther is no 100% sure win in reality.
They have to deal with the side effects that a big concentration of crypto currencies in one spot has, and those are the hackers (inluding insider jobs).

Then I would like to add  that with trading you do not take money form others, they give it to you. And in return they get the desired coin which then can  be sold for an even higher price.
We live in an economy that is built on inflation, so selling the same good for a higher price over and over again basically has no limit.

There's a thin line between Trading and Gambling and sometimes is really hard to differentiate between the 2 of them. Both has the element of luck, emotions and math and of course risk. How many times everyone here losses money because they can't control their emotions? But on the other hand, there are many here who because millions because of crypto, similar to hitting a jackpot in gambling. And sometimes you found yourself full of emotions in trading, similar to gambling wherein you can't control your bet because you have a feeling that the next roll of the dice will be in your favor. .Another worth mentioning is that to become a successful trader or gambler, one need years and years of experience but at the end, you still have the chance to lose everything in an instant.

You can always tell the gamblers because they always go All In. They never practice risk management.

Basically the first aim of a trader is not to lose money, to protect yourself on the downside. This involves only staking 1/10th on a trade, looking for reasons why the market might go down instead of up, selecting entry points carefully. Being disciplined on exit (carrying out the plan) and not looking back even if the price continues up without you.

The gamblers like to stake big, it gives them a thril. They don't think about what they could potentially lose, only about how rich they're going to be when they gain. And because they don't practice risk management, one bad trade is enough to wipe them out.

Craptsy had always been a shady exchange

Back in the day I had been actively trading doges and sometimes used this exchange for arbitrage. They were kinda market makers for many altcoins back then. Dogecoin is particularly interesting for shady behavior analysis because its price is minimal like 50 satoshi per coin, so there are always a bunch of orders at the same price, and that gives you an excellent opportunity to check for orderbook queue manipulation since when you place a new order you know exactly how much is sitting before you at that very price. There is no possibility to sell or buy more than that unless there is some orderbook queue reshuffling going on behind the scenes. And what do you think? I caught them red-handed and even made snapshots proving just that. They had nothing else to say but admit that it was likely a bug in their trading engine, huh. Regarding the topic raised in the OP, I agree that it is gambling for many newbie traders but it would be that even without profit takers like the ones mentioned

This two have some relativity but still different from one another. Both have risk associated hut jn gambling you rely mostly on the luck while in trading you can make an analysis by consider the current trend of the market. And make conclusions out of it, meaning if you become kore familiarize with trading, you can come up with strategies and develop skills.

Strictly speaking, it is not quite so. You can lose all your money in trading just as easily and as fast. For example, if you are trading using leverage and you lose control over your actions (by being too greedy), you can get a margin call when the price goes strongly against you. Then all of your deposit gets completely wiped away in less than no time. On the other hand, you don't have to bet on everything in gambling. And if fortune smiles on you after a few losing bets, you can make up for the losses and hit a jackpot.

I don't think that trading is gambling because trading and gambling are different although if we do trade and we don't have any guide at all then it might be we are gambling with our money but we still have a chance to get our money back. but in gambling, no matter how good our skills in any games, we don't have a chance to recover our losses and we are only losing from day by day. and in trading, if we have good skills in analyzing every coin in the market, we can always make a profit.

In some part, trading is different from gambling even there are risks each of them. As we all know, gambling depends on luck, more chances of we got to loose than winning, while in trading it requires deep analysis and strategic planning for us to succeed in trading.

there are some way that some time trading are just like gambling, because you are putting your money into it and you will see if that money will grow or now, or in gambling "will win or not".
If we gain profit in trading it is also the same as winning in gambling.

If we presume that the absolute majority of traders are losing in the long run, then, to me, this pretty much counts as gambling. I agree that traders do think they can expect certain scenarios to come about more often than others but if they invariably lose in the end, what does it change? When you flip a coin and you don't know anything about your chances, you can also build sophisticated theories why, for example, you should get heads more often than tails. But it doesn't matter, does it? Given that there is a sort of house edge in trading too, we should unmistakably come to the conclusion outlined in OP.

 I dont see trading as one of a gambling activity. Because even the both of them has its own risk, but still requires deep learning and tactics for success in trading. While in gambling, even you think  better ways still it has more chances on the use of luck in order to win.

and I rather think that gambling can be more promising if we need profit quickly, and of course it can not be separated from. strategy and emotional control.
it is different with deep trading analysis and sometimes it always fails. and when that happens. sometimes we have to be patient to hold until the price back high

Honestly, I disagree with you, because there is a big difference between the field of trading and gambling in many things. As well, In trading if you analyzed  the market 
 so well then you can earn an acceptable amount of money in an easy way. And always the best chance (opportunity) to ensure the profit when there is a Big drop ( Crisis) in the Market and the patience is essential in trading . In otherwise, In the field of gambling , It is very important to have a different strategies (Plan A, Plan B..) especially after each loss. And the choices are different in many types of areas (Casinos, Online sport betting) bur hurrying choices may lead to many financial losses.
On the other hand,  the only thing common to these two fields is the existence of luck for profit

Personally, I'm not a strong believer in TA myself unless we speak about pretty simple things like seeing the trend, which don't require convoluted math. That said, it is not just about sideways markets alone. It is even harder to make money on a falling market, and let's not forget that Bitcoin had been falling for almost two years before, and now we may well be at the verge of our road down. Indeed, you can try shorting but we all know how often it ends in a complete disaster with deposits blown away in a glimpse. In a sense, such markets are the worst nightmare for the total majority of traders if they come to stay.

Um, do you not think you're biased because you're good at it? If you have the discipline and the foresight then you're moving to something beyond raw gambling. Most 'traders' luzz shit at the wall and hope it sticks.

Exactly, gambling is way too far than trading, you can't stop loss in gambling but through trading you can minimize your loss by taking additional measures. Trading is gambling for panic sellers and beginners who leave the market soon after a single loss.

For most of us, it's gambling indeed. This is not different than buying a lottery ticket, if you don't know how to analyze charts and understand the market.

95% of "trader" will lose money, when only 5% will win. Of course, these 5% have more knowledge than the rest. And it's easy to lose, generally, in the first trades, we win. But once we start to lose, we make mistakes to try to recover, so we are less patient, or taking more risks. When I discovered bitcoin, I tried to trade, and of course, I almost lost all what I had  :D

Thanksfully, I didn't invested so much at this time.

If you want to stop gambling, go to a trading school and learn the basics. If you can't reconsider the question, you trade without knowledge, this will turn against you, for sure. So in this case, don't play all your stack on trading, just a small part. At least, you'll be smart and don't lose everything.

why would you make that assumption? based on what data?

even if we assume it is true, that still doesn't make "trading" like gambling. instead it makes "traders" as gamblers. and there is a big difference there.

first of all making theories doesn't mean these theories are correct. and when it comes to gambling such as flipping a coin you will never get more heads and tails. every flip has an equal chance of going either way no matter what happened before.
and that is one of the differences. for example in trading if there was a big rise (ie what happened before) then you can expect a drop or correction (you can predict heads or tails since one has a much higher chance of happening now)

secondly house edge means the house or the thingy you are betting against has a better chance of winning than you. there is no such thin in trading, and you are not trading against one entity. you are trading against a lot of others based on the market movements.
if you can go with the flow you win.

I like the point about a rise being more likely to be followed by a fall than not. There will always be some luck involved, but with smart decisions you should be able to 'win' more often than you lose. I'm just trying to build up the skill of knowing the correct times to sell and buy back in during swings to take advantage of this and increase my holdings in the coins I've chosen. Now, daytrading on minute candles, to me that feels more like gambling. Doesn't mean you can't be good at it though.

yes definitely true, trading is like a gamble..you use money as capital... you gamble it whether   it will be successful or not..it is a nature in trading but it is good to try because it adds knowledge on how and what to trade

I beats me why some people still believe that gambling can be more "promising". In trading you can at least hope to evaluate fundamentals and expect the prices to rise or fall in the near future unless these fundamentals have already been priced in. But in casino gambling, such as dice, your only chance at winning is pure luck, except when you can change the odds in your favor somehow. The longer you play the less importance and effect luck will have because it will be largely overridden by house edge. It is not particularly different in trading either, given that the market has its own "house edge" over a typical trader, but at least milking the market as via arbitrage is not considered illegal here.

No it's not, crypto trading needs a lot of learnings and abilities while gambling are not. Because when it comes to crypto trading, you can be a successful one if you have all the abilities of a good trader. But in gambling, even though that you're a professional gambler or what ever profession you have, you don't know actually what will happen to your capital, because gambling always depend on the luck of the player.

Obviously, you can find many differences between trading and gambling. In the end, it all depends upon what you are looking for and into. But here, I'm looking into the most important thing that all traders are striving for. This is profit or lack thereof. And as far as profits are concerned (lack of profits), trading and gambling are quite similar. And it is not only about some outward similarities and likeness in this regard, it is more about mechanics which explains why people are set to lose both in trading and gambling, what makes most traders lose in the long run.

There are a lot of gamblers who 'play' the crypto market. For a guy who is investing in the 1000th ranked cryptocurrency, do you really think he is trying to evaluate fundamentals and take an informed view? He is just making a punt on the coin. Trading can be treated as a game, and crypto trading is a high-adrenaline game.

This has even happened recently and honestly that sucks, knowing that a lot of these exchanges are mostly the ones playing with the market to prevent somethings from happening. The Altcoins getting dumped and then you getting the news of delisting is even more common on bittrex and that has made me as a whole concentrate more on coins that are at least better. One thing with trading is that with knowledge, you can make some predictions based on where the market may be leading and this is where swings come in, and as long as you are not controlling the market, just stick to your own knowledge.

In human endavour every things is gambling. Trading is an advance gambling and we have to let newbie know  that trading is a gambling and you cannot continue making money without loses and the odd is always against you because you can not predict the market 100% perfectly.  Don't trade without understanding how the market behave and of a truth cannot make money in forex, stock, commodities and cryptocurrencies without understanding the risk associating with it.

Yes most especially if you don't really know well about the movement of every cryptocurrencies you have in portfolio or shall we say you are not regularly following the cryptomarket and missed an opportunity to buy a cheaper crypto or to sell it at a higher price. It's like really gambling and it has also two results of "WINNING" or "LOSING".

I think stop-loss in gambling is when you stop gambling. Really, as the term itself suggests, stop-loss is used to prevent additional losses by closing your position when the price goes against you. But the loss already suffered by that time can be considered as a losing bet made in gambling. In this sense, at least metaphorically, we can say that gambling has stop-losses kind of built in. Otherwise, I agree that panic sellers are mostly gamblers because when they open a position they are just hoping for the best, which is not very far from what we see in gambling.

Yes trading is gamble because when money is involved in a short term profit is visible it means gamble, but it plays in a different way also, but since trading is about buying and selling therefore it is more on business activity, that needs a hard effort inorder to make profit,  but then after all it is still considered as gamble because money is the main character of the play😊

I will say that trading is gambling for more that 80% of the participants many want to be on the top 20% making huge profits but it is not easy at all to get to that group especially as you state since there a are a number of participants that cannot lose money, like insider traders, whales, exchanges and arbitragers, so the chance a trader that does not belong to one of those groups makes money is even slimmer.

When 8 out of 10 trades make you a profit, this isn't gambling.
That's having skills and the ability to make money on a constant basis.
Everyone can learn that. All you need is time, discipline and the will to do it!
Even with a small account and no insider informations you can make a decent profit with trading.
Even if it's just small wins. Over the time, this consistency  is what makes your account grow and making it bigger and bigger.
Playing the lottery is gambling. Betting on horse races is gambling.
Trading is no gambling if you acquired a decent skill set for various market situations. You don't even have to read books.
It's all for free on the internet. You can do paper trading and practice by using tradingview for instance.
But you need to have patience and practice regularly. The more passionate you are about it, the faster you will improve.

I don't see how it can be otherwise. As I have already said in OP, a sideways market and speculative one at that like Bitcoin's, is a sort of controlled "lab" environment where things can't be different. Well, I have heard that point of most traders losing in the long run mentioned multiple times here and there but since I didn't have any source I just looked for it myself. Here (https://vantagepointtrading.com/whats-the-day-trading-success-rate-the-thorough-answer/) are the hard numbers. I think you can find plenty of other sources to that tune. Other than that, I don't say that all trading is gambling. It is gambling for most traders, which I also mentioned in OP.


Well, this is the point I'm trying to make here. No matter how sophisticated your theories are it still comes down to chances.


I refer to house edge here as something which you can't beat, neither in gambling nor in trading. You can think of trading against a lot of other traders like yourself as a manifestation of what loosely matches luck in gambling. So you either win or lose and it is a game of chances minus the house edge.

Well you are right, when we do trading we take the risk of either failure or success, it's like you bet in a casino using all your capital. But what was different when you trade is that there are lots of option you can choose from and you can study first the market to somehow make a good assumption of which will likely to appreciate unlike in gambling that is absolutely clueless but just a wild guess.

I think trading is not gambling. although trading often has drastic changes but trading can we analyze. with the right analysis then we can get a satisfactory result. you have to explore the various things dah you also have to find information on the coin that will be invested. the better we do the analysis the more satisfying the results we will get.

Trading is not gambling at all. I don't consider Poker gambling even, but trading is far less like gambling than poker. First of all, it's not a game of chance, the results are based on real life things, speculation, news, real money transactions. They're not based on chance, on dices, on wheels and  randomness.

Ill analyze gambling vs poker vs trading in three different dimensions

-1: House edge and winning odds-
A. Gambling: The house has a fixed edge of 10% or so, there is no skill, and you will always lose in the long run
B. Poker: The house still has an edge of 10% via the rake, but you are playing other players so if you are 10% better than other players (or 20% depending on the maths here), then you will win in the long run. Its very hard to get this kind of skill but its possible.
C. Trading: The house has a rake of 0.4% via commissions, and the game is based on skill. So its much easier to beat the game than poker if you are only 0.4% better than the other players.

-2: Risk-
A. Gambling: Typically betting 100% of your money which can be instantly lost
B. Poker: Typically bettering 100% of your money which can be instantly lost
C: Trading: Uness you are using margin, the loss is rarely 100%. A typical crypto loss is around 5-10%. On the worst of days, bitcoin goes down maybe 50% before having a hard rebound and if you have patience you wont even need to take that loss. You control your risk. You can set stop losses, you can catch rebounds. A good trader only takes losses of less than 1-5%, and makes wins of 50%+. Youd have to be in dozens of these losing trades in a row to lose your money.

-3: Bitcoin X factor -
Bitcoin has historically been in a bull market. Even with the 'rake' and even as a bad trader, the odds are always highly in favor of investors. Its still a zero sum game but the people who pay are going to be the big time investors that buy at the very top of $1M (or maybe it was $20K). So if all you do is make long trades, it is very hard to lose fiat (but easy to lose coins). This of course will no longer be the case once bitcoin finally fails.

Well, life is gamble too that is why we have to gamble all the time because without taking risk I don't know if we will still win the battle here in the world, it is fine to do trading but be ready when you lose since you cannot win here all the time especially when you are daily trading or still have the job.

I want to straighten it out, trading is not a gamble. Well, if you are just guessing in trading it can be said as gambling.
But here trading requires the expertise of the analyst so you do not lose.
Only a few people who think commerce is gambling because of the lack of science in trade, they just do their luck.

Gambling it may sound but the results will prove its identity and satisfaction, it's based on facts.It's not even a rumor and not even a battle of chance. On the other hand, it both attempts to create a capital gain. Life in any way is about adventure and so same thing goes with bitcoin. I think many investors and sectors trying to pull bitcoin down, because it's making a big wave in the market and has even become a threat to any organization. Call it gambling, scam, or whatever you want it is a platform that creates wealth and prosperity. Try and see it for yourself.

poker is a gambling games and it's using money to attract people to play. but trading is not a gambling as long as we know how to trade. and if we only know how to buy at lower price and sell at high price, then I don't think that this is including in gambling because we still use the basic strategy of trading. and if we can stick with this then trading is not a gambling.

Stop loss in the real sense of trading is more like re-strategizing, and the difference from a real gambling is that you have an opportunity to get back in at the lower spot and get even better profit than the little loss you had and I see it as just playing safe.

In the literal sense of what gambling means, we may attribute it a little bit to that, since it is mainly speculation and you are acting based on what indicators and charts are telling you and EXPECTING a positive outcome, but at the end, as long as you know what you are doing while doing proper analysis, your chances of having more profit than loss is guaranteed, which you cannot be able to have in dice, blackjack and co that is totally based on luck. Trading only becomes 100% gambling when you have no strategy and you are making bets on the market relying on luck, while it is far more than that.

But anyway if seen from the basic of the effort, it's really not a gamble, it's more dependent on the expertise in analyzing the prices over time as well as choosing the right coins to be used as a trading effort. This is not a game such as in a gambling, which's only dependent on lucky (not strategy), and I think the luckies in trading depends on expertise on the price analys, it's different with a gambling that's just dependent on the game which's really randomly and testing our luckies.

Lol. One thing I have noticed with trading is as long as you can manage yourself in the market to trade safely, then you should be fine. However, a lot of people only gamble the market, until they realize that they are totally wrong.

At least, we have somethings to look out for to know if the whales are looking to direct a market upward, look for available resistance and play with that, and at the end, that gives you some undisputed advantage as well over someone who does not have the skills.

I honestly like the last aspect of OP where he said losing to someone who has an undisputed advantage over him and the market. I consider all these groups as whales anyway and whether we leave it or not, they control the market and they will always have the highest advantage, and the only thing is to make use of this to roll along with them and see where it leads which gives the learned trader an edge over the ones who just see gambling as 100% luck. One way or the other, someone would be smarter than the other.

Trading looks like a gamble when you are in a hurry and want to quickly make alot money in short time and without proper analysis. So when you lose, then you judge that trading is gambling.

Well, I'm afraid that it is not that simple. Having all the abilities of a good trader is definitely not enough. Imagine that all traders trading at the moment are your exact clones with absolutely the same abilities. So who takes money from whom will depend on entirely random factors. But isn't it what makes up luck? So it is not enough to have those abilities, your abilities should be way above an average level if you want to get consistent profits. And since there is a group of the invulnerables against which you have no chance, your chance of not going against them is also mostly luck based or random.

There is no simple task here in life, you need to exert more effort if you want to become successful, there is no tree full of fruit of money that we will just pick up of course everything we are doing needs time and patience as well as gamble since we don't assure what will happen.

Yes trading is also gambling but at least with a small risk. Gambling is a game that if you lose you lose all that you have gambled. But in trading it is a buying and selling formula in which you can get more profit when the value will soar high but if not you can at least get a little profit and the invested money is still intact or at least a little bit lesser.

If trading is a gambling then i will put my bet in trading not in gambling simply because i never know anyone that they become rich because of gambling instead their lives become ruin almost losing everything including their families but i know a lot of people who become rich because they joined trading investments in which they are now living in harmonies with their families.

I don't get your point frankly, don't get what you are trying to say or challenge here. In essence, I'm saying that in trading you can at least take steps to making more reasonable "bets" on future price moves which could bear some fruit in terms of profit. This is not possible in gambles such as dice, coin tossing, etc. But that doesn't of course deny the fact that there are quite a few people who are gambling while trading in every possible sense of the word. Other than that, the whole topic is about just that, that is trading as gambling, a high-adrenaline game.

Simply put, trading is like betting on sports. It is a gamble of course but you can at least review and study the aspects that would determine the results. That way you'll have a better chance of making a good risk. Its the same. Of course you can't compare trading to gambling games such as dice and roullette.

They are trying to earn money, and being one of the largest crypto holders out there makes price manipulation very tempting as well as profitable to them. But as it was already said numerous times, they can only make money by emptying the pockets of low-profile traders. It is still Wild West where fortunes are made and lost in a glimpse. I often think that there are only two main methods of trading that are actually available to us, though they are not even trading as such. The first is just holding your coins and staying away from price manipulation, and the second is arbitrage. Pick up anything in between, and you will end run over by ruthless price manipulators.

It might be the same thing, considering that buying and selling is just like we gamble our money by putting it in high risk. We are the one who are controlling our money, we may get lucky if we have a good market and gain profit same thing that may happen in gambling. Trading is just like a game,  we need to be smart in order to win.

And most people will not know that since they have no strategy and all they do is gamble anyway. I would consider it a gamble for someone who really just sees it as gambling. Buy low, sell high, no strategy and they just feel they can always just keep doing that and depending on luck, wishing the market will work in their favor.

Those who see it as a real business obviously know how to play smartly by learning, and then using the opportunities to make a lot of profit. And from the look of things, you can never have that in the real gambling world.

In fact, trading should be considered far more than the normal sense people have when it comes to gambling. You have great opportunities to make it more in the profit side if you know what you are doing than gambling that you will only have to rely totally on pure luck. Yes, with the meaning of gambling which makes life itself a gamble generally, but you can always make it a calculated one and a smart one.

I see what you are trying to say here, that is every human activity has an element of chance or gambling attached to it but this is not the point. Trading is gambling for most traders but it is not like true gambling as in dice or roulette. In a casino all players are gamblers no matter what, while in trading only some part, however large, is gambling. And there are plenty of intermediate stages between thoughtless and reckless trading at one end and things like arbitrage at the other.

Trading isn't really gamble in real markets but cryptomarkets are very different. Noone surely knows their nature, as they are still very young. That's why it makes crypto trading - gambling. My experience showed that indicators don't work %70-80 of the time with bitcoin and others.

I emphatically agree that no book however good will help you unless you already have some psychological traits or characteristics required for successful trading. But I can't agree that paper trading is of great help here either. Ultimately, the success or failure in trading is determined by how fast and how good you react under heavy stress. Besides, making 8 profitable trades out of 10 doesn't mean a shit. For example, you can make plenty of small wins and then one big crash sweeps away all your profit. In fact, it doesn't matter how often you lose, all that counts is your final balance at the end of the day. You can make just one trade and with that cover a hundred of losing trades made before.

Right,  trading is also not like gambling for me because of the mere fact that you can control how much profit you earned by using analysis before making any decisions. In trading,  you can make sure that there is a profit unlike in gambling where there is totally no assurance and  just luck.  Some are saying that mathematics  can be used to win gambling games but I think that it was very imaginative.

"Actually no, not really… trading is not at all like betting in the event that you realize what you're doing". Obviously at the time I did not understand what I was doing, yet that is unimportant.

Notice a typical generic show? "Risk" and "losing". On the off chance that there are two things a trader knows, it's that there's dependably risk and you will lose cash sooner or later. It's basically the cost of working together as a trader.

I do not think that trading is the same as gambling, obviously it's very different. In gambling we spend money to bet. while in trade, the capital we spend is only to develop the results obtained.

yes you are right many people who consider bitcoin trading is gambling, but if this gambling exists trading FIAT? is not his system almost the same as bitcoin? is that gambling too? I do not think so and obviously I do not consider this gambling.

Well, it arguably is related to gambling in some points. But it is not 100% gambling. It is a fact that gambling and trading is about tactics, luck, and predictions. However, trading requires taking much time to do research about the whole market.

Gambling is just about mastering the game and see your opponents reactions if you are playing poker for example. Added to that, trading is about patience and it takes so much time for you to gain a good profit.

A good insight about the topic since gambling and trading are both risky but I think its still different from on its own definition and will always depend on the perception of one person. Trading requires so many things to become more successful, but yeah it can also be consider as a gambling since people are quiet more greed in terms of profit taking so for me its depend on your belief.

But how many traders actually conduct their "due diligence"? Note that it is not just about making some studies as if just that could earn you profits. It is more about making assumptions in a really constructive way. I have already given an example why this distinction makes the difference but it is kinda worth repeating. Imagine that you are tossing a coin, though you don't know anything about your chances or how random the outcome is. You may build complex theories allegedly predicting the outcomes but how useful would they all really be? It is the same with trading. You don't know whether your theories will be of any merit, while you may still be gambling.

but nevertheless in these two occupations there are some aspects that unite them and make them similar. It is Azart who leads people during the game and during the trade, especially if something turns out well.

Not to sound picky or nagging, or anything, but did you read the OP? If you do not belong to the group of money takers and profit makers, you will be losing most of the time until you have nothing left. I it was pretty easy to make money in crypto while it had been universally rising but in mature markets like currency or commodity markets it is next to impossible for couch traders to make money consistently over longer terms because you can earn only by taking money from someone else. And that someone else will be yourself in the majority of cases.

Your points are good. Point number one proved to be a great reality check in december when people thought the price will go even further but it didn't.
Point number 2,luck matters and so does your amount of money you're willing to spend. If one sells 100BTC and the other sells 1BTC, exchanges will favor the former than the latte because more profits.

Trading is kind of Gambling, where you have to believe in your instincts and also luck after after you buy with good study upon the asset you did the trade.
Trading is much like learned and educated gambling, and the risk gets minimized gradually while you learn and analyse more correctly  before trading.
In crypto trading you can be at loss, where as often gambling leads to complete loss of ones capital.

Normally, the meaning of gambling in the dictionary is doing something without knowing the possible outcome. If we all do, there is absolutely no way there would be stop loss, which is one thing I am pretty sure the whales (main market controllers) do not use since they are the ones who decide to direct the market the way they want. They are more like the house edge in this show, and they can never lose.

However, the only thing that makes it perfect than a normal gambling is you can still try to play safe with some skills and knowledge than someone who does not have.

That may be true because even how good a trader you are, there will really be a time where you earn almost nothing. Trading is quite the risk since you are trading with a very risky digital currencies because of its market price volatility. You may bought a crypto at a very low price today and only realized that it will pump after a couple of years.

Well, it seems that I could agree on your third "dimension", that Bitcoin has been in a bull market for the last few years, but for the "has been" part. You likely know it better than most posters here how bad this can play out in the end, which you seem to admit yourself. Basically, we can't read the future, and it is particularly true in respect to long-term investments, especially in the crypto world. In short-term or day trading this is irrelevant since you are mostly riding the volatility thing anyway, and it is not going to disappear any time soon.

The other two points are cherry picking. I had been gambling a little in the past and I'm somewhat familiar with the things there. Most casinos have a house edge of around 0.5-1% nowadays, so it is not much different from trading fees. And you don't typically stake everything.

Trading is risky, you also need some luck but no matter that all I wouldn't say that trading is the same as gambling.
For trading you need some skills and knowledge and as far as I'm concered trading is a job and in financial world is actualy considered to be a job. Also, there is no way that you can influence on gambling and how the final result is going to be but with trading is different, the result depends on you and your skills and ability to estimate the situation.

Most wannabe traders are gambling anyway. It works when the price steadily rises with minor pullbacks as was the case with Bitcoin for a couple of last years but it no longer works when a sideways market establishes. And then it starts to be a cut-throat competition and the vast majority of traders eventually lose. Ultimately, it doesn't matter what people think or how sophisticated their trading strategies are. It is the end result that counts, either profit or loss.

I believe in this after all. In bitcoin, you will risk your money on something that has not any assurance wether it will lose or not. Any kind of risking is a form of gambling. Gambling unto your future. Making some 50/50 desicion if you still want to buy, trade or sell. If it goes up then you will win, if it drops down, you lose. Even if we deny it, we cannot accept the fact that it is still gambling.

It's investing.
Buying and selling cryptocurrency is basically a new 21st century way of investing. It's like buying and selling currency, except Bitcoin is s digital currency that has no central authority.
So, we have established that buying and selling Bitcoin is an investment. Now we go back to your original question, is it gambling.

But if you compare with stock trading, you will find the valid reason why Dow Jones stock is weak today ?
Oh because of Trump effect ( for example )

But in crypto world, anything can changed ( up to 20% ) without any valid reason so that's why bitcoin trading far riskier than ordinary trading !

Life is a gamble not only trading, trading is just one of the ways for you to earn  all what we are doing was a gamble and no assurance at all, so life is just a matter of how we are going through of just stop and we'll just be contented in what we do have currently.

Well, I see that people still miss my point. Me and a few other guys here have already said that Bitcoin is a zero-sum game mostly. Now imagine if purely hypothetically that there are no money-takers in the market and everyone is in the same boat. Then try to think how every trader can make profits in these circumstances. The main problem is not even it is simply impossible because there is only so much money in the market. It is that a small group of people will soon get all the money available in the system. And see how guaranteed are your chances of having profit if you belong to the majority of traders that will lose money.

It totally depends on the way we want to look at it though. Like someone already rightly said, gambling is all about luck and if that is all you are relying on to make a trade without a strategy and you feel you are buying low and waiting to see if luck will let it increase so that you sell, then you are definitely gambling.

However, compared to the real gambling where everything is based on luck, you can use strategies to make good decisions but like the OP said, the whales will always have the highest advantage since they are the ones controlling the market and the smart traders are just tagging along while the gamblers are just betting any position they feel like.

I think trading isn't a gamble and there are various factors that make the difference between trading and gambling in between,

1.Trader has assets or goods to be temporarily traded gamblers have only capital and courage in their activities.
2.The trader must have knowledge and strategies in the field of trading order can minimize losses while gambling has a chance and good luck to gamble
3.traders need to do the analysis of to know the prospect of the asset or goods that become the object of trade. .
   while gambling enough to have hope and luck alone
4.traders should be able to choose a good time to make trade transactions either selling or buying, while gambling every moment is a good time to bet.
5.Managment risks in trading need to be taken into account about the risk level of the trading transaction and of course attempted much as possible for to
   minimize the losses that will occurs, while the defeat in gambling is a consequence from within a game

I wouldn't say that trading and gambling are the same, because trading and gambling are different by nature.Trade on my Demo account only,then the game ends))

Is it? in my opinion, trading and gambling are so different that you cannot ever compare these things. Trading is a very hard work when you use mostly wits, not luck.

We do have our own approach about this two things, those who already understand the difference will not agree that this two is just the same, but for those who just came in and still assessing the situations, they might say that it can be same in terms of possibilities as the huge fluctuations are killing
most traders who only relied with luck and own instinct before selecting their supported projects.

Gambling can be termed as an educated guess. It isn't a pure gamble. A person does a thorough analysis of charts and patterns. Added to that, trader looks for the market sentiments as well. Whereas in gambling, most of the time it's pure luck. Both, trading and gambling, are the games of luck but in former, through analysis, chances are made better.

With gambling, you will quickly lose all the money you have. With trading, just analyze and invest reasonably, if there is risk the money lost will not be too large. Do not compare trading and gambling.

Trading and gambling are different but similar in a form of creating capital gain for a short period of time without assurance or cant be predicted the outcome.

But there are ways to maximize the chance to gain in trading like learning the right strategies, techniques and right discipline to not mixing your emotions in every decision you make.

So far this is effective when I trade compared to gambling that is more on luck and no strategies can save you from losing.

Yeah, I totally reason with that, since we cannot actually know the outcome anyway and all we do is make a decision based on the knowledge we have and the analysis we have done and expect a positive outcome which sometimes may also end up wrong but if done well, most of the time, it usually ends up well.

However, when we are comparing ourselves to the market controllers, we are really just gambling somehow but at the end of the day, it is a reasonable one when you know what you are doing.

That simply explains the difference between it and the real gambling world. If we are to look at the literal meaning, one might say it is somehow related, but like Canis said, it all totally depends on the category of trader you belong to and adding to what he has stated, I would say those who trade without knowledge and those who trade with knowledge, and then we leave the whales out of it for now since they are the market controllers.

In essence, it becomes a pure gambling for someone without knowledge and a lower risk gambling for someone with knowledge, since they both do not know the outcome, but one is smarter than the other.

May be you call as gambling but that is happening in fiat currency for a decade as share market, would you call that as gambling though? Trading is just like a market of any product where seller opts for a price and if we are okay with the price we could buy or sell to the seller back.

Gambling is like investing your small money first for a minimal profit and part by part you invest what you have or more than that losing all your money and winning only depends on luck but trading profit depends upon our skills and little bit of luck.

Lol. The last statement really got me laughing, but with the way the cryptocurrency market is presently, the level of FOMO and new traders, it is always very easy for us to see those who would prefer to join a moving train, hence in a couple of months for long term holding, you may be in profit.

I feel you though, and the thing is that we cannot know what to expect from any market and sometimes even TA can still fail us, but in the long run, it is better than just predicting and expecting only luck (which is the real gambling) to take its course as trading requires skills to get the best of it.

Everything generally about life is gambling since we cannot predict the next outcome and we are only trying our best to get it right. For instance, a surgeon performing an operation even though a good one, may not know what the outcome would be for the patient after the operation, lawyers may not know whether he or she will end up winning a case and so on with other professions, but at the end, we always hope that with our skills, we can at least get it right most of the time.

Of course it is. No matter how skilled trader you are, (or poker player/or sports expert), you might lose horribly in the short to mid term. No matter how well prepared you are, how much research you do, or good strategy you have, it is still possible the market (cards/result) go the other way and wipe you out. There's an element of randomness and variables you can't control or predict.
Technical analysis and fundamental are just a distraction in these wild markets, shady exchanges, market manipulations and inside practices are not predictable and eventually destroy even the best traders.

You cannot even know the movement of any coin, you can only use some analysis and some of the technical indicators to make those decisions and get the best of the trend change every time.

It is gambling when all you do is just capitalize on luck and expect to just buy anywhere and sell anywhere without using some good analysis to your advantage to make good decisions. Trading is more than just gambling your position in the market.

Yeah, but you have forgot that you do not get any positive result if you do not have any knowledge and which is what makes trading extreme gambling for those who do not have any trading idea or knowledge. This is not a call for debate, as long as we cannot give a 100% affirmation of the future and we are expecting a good outcome, makes it a prediction game.

Nevertheless, knowledge helps us to get the best of it to make accurate predictions once in a while, and without it, you are a gambler. Any trader that is depending on luck 100% on trading is definitely the highest of all the gamblers in the category that the OP mentioned.

I understand where he is coming from which is the fact that most of us who even have strategies, sometimes fail and we only have further strategies to make further decisions for a better gain. The whales like he said will never lose, they have all it takes, and they move the market the way they want, which makes the rest of us just trying to catch up.

In the end, it all comes down to how much you earn vs how much you lose, the financial result. It doesn't matter what trading strategies you build, what trading techniques you use, what trading philosophy you stick to. If you lose continuously, then you are gambling, end of story. I understand that trading feels differently and it is comforting as well as encouraging to find or conjure up explanations why trading is not gambling. But if you accept that trading is ultimately a zero-sum game and there is a certain edge that some actors have over the market, you will have to accept as well that trading is gambling for the majority of traders.

Pretty good point. Normally, if we are to look at the real meaning of gambling in the literal sense, trading can easily fit in, since it is still a prediction and we are busy awaiting an expected outcome which sometimes may not even dance to our tune irrespective of our analysis, but we get it right most of the time and that is what differentiates it from the real gambling where you have no strategy or information to make quality decision and all you rely on his luck. So with that, we may call trading a good or smartest way to gamble.

Since gambling is all about luck which is what makes it different entirely from trading. I understand that we may see it as a higher educated form of gambling since we are speculating and predicting what an outcome might be based on the indicators or analysis we do, but still, it is nothing compared to a total game of luck.

We can't say trading and gambling are same. Gambling is purely luck and all about risks. Once lost we have to lose everything we bet and  if we have luck we can earn much all by chances. If we see trading it too involves high risks and of course we can overcome the risks if the person trading have good skill and knowledge plus keen observation on the market situation.

The recent move of the prices of BTC has proven it. I'm certain that if there was no Binance FUD we'd be higher than 11700 USD. Everything was indicating that we are in the rising pattern and the pattern that formed when people sold following the FUD news of a hack made others think that double top is forming. As a result we have another wave of sales today. Worst case scenario they will continue doing so until we reach $7k to form this pattern.
https://uk.tradingview.com/chart/BTCUSD/Brab2m8H-Double-Top-on-Bitcoin/

You're welcome, bud.

The problem is you can't get into their mind. Another problem is they come in all shades and colors, with different ideas and intentions. What I want to say is that they make easy money of course but it doesn't mean they always go for it. If things don't "dance to their tune", they will just stay away from doing anything. After all, if they are indisputable, they can't fight against each other, right? In a nutshell, guessing what will be the next move and who is actually going to make it is not very far from gambling on its own.

It's a simple matter of there not being enough demand to sustain anything over the $10,000 mark. If the demand was there, then it would have broken through $12,000 already, regardless of what the charts indicate.

That would be a shame, but not entirely impossible. It's a shame because the longer we trade below the $10,000 mark, the lower the overall confidence in the market will be, so $8000 or even $7000 might become reality.

I however prefer to wait for the market to dive below the $9000 mark to form a solid conclusion, because at this point the downward movement might just be of temporary nature. This market can bounce up as fast as it went down.

Technically, what we do everyday is a gamble. Investing involves and individual risking his/her resources in the right circumstances and then withdrawing it when the right time comes. What makes it difference is we have all the factors to consider and the knowledge to know WHEN to withdraw every investment. Same as trading; people trade and risk their resources for higher profits but they have the power to control their risk and limit the chances of losing every investment. What makes these different from gambling is, even if you have all the techniques and tricks, if the odds are against you then you are surely bound to lose.


They may be different in nature but all involves something that can be lost and the presence of risk. Anyone can gamble as long as they have the right amount of resources but not everyone can do trading as it involves some techniques and knowledge that can potentially lower the risk of you losing your investments, unlike gambling.

I think trading is not a place for gambling trading is pure selling and buying bitcoin if you think gambling I think it is wrong. gambling is guessing the numbers whereas trading is only buying and selling when it's lucky then selling never to guess the numbers.

For sure, we cannot always know what can happen with what we are holding in the market and sometimes, since we cannot predict what can really happen and we only have the analysis to help us, we still have the stop loss to help us out when our limit is reached. The only thing is that we do not only need to rely on luck 100% to be able to make a good trade, but in our skills which is what makes a professional different from a noob.

In a way, we may need some luck, but we cannot always rely on it but in our own skills. Trading is risky for sure, and with the way the market is, you still have to be extra careful and obviously, it seems only the group of whales in the market are the ones who are not really gambling since they are the ones who control it to the tune they want. The only saving grace we have is that there are strategies we can always make use of to play safe and win most of the time.

You assumed wrongly perhaps because you're not into trading yourself! You may want to know that no experienced traders expects all the orders they place to end in profits and only those who do not understand the mechanism of the market would reason otherwise. To jump to the conclusion that trading and gambling are one and same, is a clear manifestation of the lack of understand how knowledge and skills demystifies mysteries!

first you need to decide what kind of responsibility and desire you feel about gambling diarrhea or to trade. In fact, they are almost the same, but that nemesis is engaged in trade, the trader gets a profit much more often and much more, unlike a gambler .

This is an argument which I already heard a few times in this thread alone. I had been gambling a lot in the past (dice to be sure), and believe me this is a wrong conclusion in general. Indeed, if you bet all you can lose all, as simple as it gets. But if you think that if you don't close a losing position in trading, then you will be able to make a profit or at least break even one day, this is a wrong assumption too. This has been the case with Bitcoin till recently but if the price never reaches your entry point, you are stuck. And in that very case, it is not particularly different from losing a bet in dice, even if you close your position, since a loss is a loss no matter where it happens.

Trade is not always gambling. There are many people who abuse the bitcoin to commit illegal acts but not all gambling. Bitcoin is also a legitimate way of doing business and earning money if you follow the rules of bitcoin.

Yeah it's different. Although both has risk to lose your money. Trading has higher chances that you gain profits as gambling needs luck to gain due to slim probability of winning.

although we are lose the money in the trading, we still have a chance to recover our lose in the future especially when the price increases higher than the price we buy. but in the gambling, we cannot recover the money we lose because we don't have a chance to do that and the house is always won in the end. and if we can think what the benefits from trading and gambling, I think we can choose trading depends on gambling to make the money.

Thats the only difference between gambling and trading,the chance of losing is minimal in trading that gambling but the essence is the same,your betting money to take the profit,this has been my outview eversince i compared this both.i am not a gambler but im a trader,but now i am confused between this if i will continue doing both or forget at all.since i am earning in signature campaign and having a work and business

That's the difference between the two, in trading we do not lose our money if we will not sell it and just hold it until the price will come back we call our loss as a "paper loss" with gambling if we lose it means our money is not going back again not unless we gamble another money and try to win back the money we loss. Both involve gaining profit and having losses but very different in terms on how you do it.

There's still a chance for you to lose your money in trading just like in gambling. You may also lose it in instant and just as fast like in gambling, the difference would be your decision or choice. I guess this is the dirty reality of trading and exchanges which is done for the extra buck.

As for the trader who is confused of what to do, I suggest to continue doing so if it's profitable. Signature campaigns only last for certain periods. As long as it's not detrimental to your work and business, trading is still profitable and you may earn some extra income through it.

You are right, if we don't sell it then still we are not yet losing something because the investment is still there and we cannot assume already that when the price gets low that we are already lose, it is not calculated like that losing starts the time we sold our investment.

It is just like a gambling that is correct, but in trading there is likely more chance of winning because you can earn here as much as you can, by just having enough patience and trust in what coins you are trading at, unlike in gambling that you only left with two options and that is to win or lose.

I don't disagree with your view but this is not what I'm trying to say here. You can't defeat a casino but for luck and timing. I mean the longer you gamble the higher are your odds of a complete failure in the end, so your only chance is luck and running away immediately. But this is not to say that, first, there are no winners in gambling, and, second, there are no losers in trading. As a matter of fact, both in trading and gambling alike most players are losing in the long haul unless they chance to win and call it a day. And never look back.

Most of the gambling turns your profit to zero if you really dont utilize your patience especially for dice rolls. Every time I tried on my gambling hoppy I always lose haha. Because every time you see that your profit grow, you will be triggered to play more. That the nature of it.

Everyone has a different perspective on this, I personally have an opinion that everything about investing is gambling, including investing in gold. Because at one time their prices can go down and up, while in the activitas trading, certainly very necessary profit factor although many traders who have experience in reading the market still there is a possibility to lose. So trading is a small part of gamblling is correct.

Trading and gambling are very similar. The best way to trade like a casino operates is to focus on fewer trades that align with your edge and having lower volatility of performance by keeping a disciplined approach to money management so that you don't take a significant drop in your trading progress. If you are able to exercise extreme discipline and laser focus on your trading strategy, you can profit in the market but if you approach the market with random abandonment, then the market can and will cause you serious pain.

Both trading and gambling need strategies in order for you to earn profits so trading is somewhat similar to gambling. But of course we do have our own perspective on how we see both different types of source of income. Trading for me is somehow fair because you're the one who will decide on your fate together with some luck, while on the other side gambling gives you more house advantage so it means your winning chance will reduce.

but so far, people just become panic to see their balance reduces and they cannot hold for a longer time so they decide to sell their coin even they get the loss. this is happening with my friend even I've been told him to just stay calm and not attract to panic for the news in out there but he is not listening to me and I only said to him, the decision is on you and I give you suggestion but you cannot wait for more so I hope you can handle for the next things that might be happen.

I don't have much to add because you have basically said it all. The only thing which may be worth saying is that just like you hope for good luck in gambling, you hope not to meet bad luck in trading. You can make a calculated and smart move but still fail simply because of someone trading against you who is smarter or just luckier than yourself. In a metaphysical sense, the more knowledgeable and experienced you become, the less you care for good luck propping you up and more about bad luck not meddling with your trading ways.

I tend to disagree with this view. Real markets like currency markets as well as commodities and derivatives are even more gambling than gambling itself for couch traders. As others have mentioned, crypto is or was very forgiving, at least till recently. You could have bought a few coins and then wait patiently till the price rose and then you reaped the profits. This doesn't work very well with established markets.

That is true, gambling is predicting the outcome of the game that involves money likewise trading has the same concept but gambling differs in a way that it is a game that you can enjoy losing your money (for rich people having some fun) while trading is a serious thing for traders that need to earn profits. Besides in trading you need to study first the status of certain altcoins before buying it, for you to assure less risk in it, and also can be a long term trade when the markets will be down or in red days so you need to wait when it rise up again.

of course different. if you really pay attention to it, trading really provides a wider opportunity, and a much smaller risk in comparison with gambling. basically trading is activity, selling, and buying.

Trading is a serious business, it is a pure financial activity for the sake of economical growth. Trading offers a lot more than just buying and selling. It is a full time activity also it teach us the lesson to how to stand again and overcome the losses after being dumped. Gambling will rarely give you another opportunity for a comeback.
Basically there is a very thin line that distinguish gambling and trading from each other. I think only a trader and a gambler can understand the differences between them, to a lay man it seems to lie in the same category.

It is pretty easy to control how much you earn provided you earn anything in the first place. But most traders are losing most of the time, sorry. It is the net result that counts in the end. Everyone knows that they should buy low and sell high, but sometimes, well, actually oftentimes it ends the other way round. In short, unless you are a market maker, money taker, or their close friend, you can't make sure that there is a profit, for you.