Bitcoin Forum

I don't know if many of you notice this, but a lot of people who simply don't understand trading or derivatives seem hell bent on taking away our right to trade, just like the current proposed UK ban. They are cheering on the regulators to ban everything. They think any leverage is gambling. How do you feel realizing these people want to take your livelihood away?

People really have no clue what bitcoin is at certain ages. You can make a 20 year old understand what bitcoin is in under 15 minutes, you can make a 40 year old understand what bitcoin is in couple of hours by answering all details of their questions, but you can't really make a 60+ year old understand bitcoin that easily, of course there are some people who will understand but they are not the standard, they are the niche so that is why there will some bans here and there.

Politicians are usually old people, they have no idea what they are voting for and only listen to what others told them about it or they just have a agenda in their mind they are not willing to change, that is why for years we will have these old people who grew up in no tv's in every room type of age and in 20-30 years our politicians will be better people.

I believe that part of it is because they look at what majority of people are doing. when they are all gambling, then you can define what they do as gambling too. but in most cases it is only about regulating the market not banning it! and regulations can be a good thing if they are done right. right now bitcoin is regulated in some of the developed countries and because of that, it has been growing a lot faster and easier since people feel safer and have a guideline of how to treat the market.

IMO, I think leverage is gambling, not just in crypto but in the stock market, bond market, and any other market.  If you're trading with other people's funds hoping to outpace the interest you're paying on the borrowed funds with the profits from your investment....that's pretty much gambling.

However, investors/speculators should be allowed to do it, but within reason.  You remember Long Term Capital Management in 1998?  They almost wrecked the whole financial system because they used so much leverage it baffled the investigators.  And individual investors can easily get in way over their heads and lose everything.  I would support some regulation, but I lean more toward freedom to trade how you like.

I haven't heard anything about this, as I don't live in the UK and don't follow news.  Can you give me a TL;DR?

In a globalized financial system with global markets it's really hard to ban any activity on a purely national level.If crypto trading gets banned in the UK.The traders will simply move their money to other jurisdictions,where crypto trading is allowed.Honestly,I don't a flying f**k about what people say in regards to crypto trading.

It depends on the part of the world you're from, where I come from people of all ages understand the bitcoin and it's blockchain technology, and not all countries are laden with aged leaders.

Crypto ban didn't start today, since bitcoin became a currency so many countries have tried to stop it's trade in their country and it's definitely not due to the fact that they have old leaders, every country has policy makers and it's not just the president alone.

Sadly not many 20-year-old care about Bitcoins or cryptos. Take a look at this survey : https://www.businessinsider.com/gen-z-not-buying-cryptocurrency-facebook-libra-2019-6?IR=T

So forget about old people understanding this space.

As far as derivatives being considered gambling, it IS a form of gambling, so is speculative trading. Its a huge industry taking it down is not only financially unwise but downright impossible.

Lots of people are find of that… if they see that something is not really meant for them and it is benefitting another person, they would like to do anything possible to get that removed… since it is not benefitting them, so what’s t need for it? It’s not good for them, so they don’t want it. It’s no longer a new thing this time around, there are lots of people fighting seriously to get it banned, forgetting that it can be something that is meaningful to others. I just hope that all these people gets to understand that this is not really something bad, we should only tackling those that are using crypto for a bad purpose.

The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is currently investigating banning the trading of crypto derivatives to retail customers. This is not a new way of looking at derivatives. Retail is generally for vanilla products, e.g. a purchase of stocks/shares or buying foreign exchange. These are most often bought by Joe Public in an Over the Counter trade, that is buying without the need for an Exchange. That might be just a high street shop that changes currency.

Derivatives are Exchange traded and exchanges are regulated and trades carried out by trained and qualified professionals who have the ability to understand the complexity of the derivative product (CDP, CFD, Options, Futures, etc.) The issue with letting the public buy derivatives is they probably haven't got a clue how the products work and no idea how the risk profile of them can be assessed or how they can be accurately valued - so will lose their money hard. Add in the fact all crypto us hugely volatile, retail customers likely will not have the margin to hold these assets without getting taken out by aggressive institutional investors.

This happens a lot, especially in short selling, spread betting, etc. where small traders get shaken out by intentional / engineered market moves by the whales. We see this in crypto too.

CBF

Just to highlight this concern - banning crypto trading is not what the UK FCA is looking at, crypto is fine even if regulation to some level will likely come. It's crypto derivatives that the FCA are looking at and they need to.

The main issue with derivatives and what has caused several financial meltdowns, is the difficulty in pricing the derivative as it's value is derived from an underlying asset or basket of them. If, like in the housing crisis, those underlying assets are real estate of different classes, blended into a package, bundled with interest rate products and who knows what else... the true price of the derivative and security that it represents is a nightmare to assure. Hence the outcome being a financial meltdown as even the 'professionals' have no clue.

CBF

Looks like they are seeing a lot of average financial being are getting richer. ;D
There must be control. Yeah control them so the rich will still look rich and take down those poor people more and more.
They think that is the balance of the world and so they must keep it that way.

Me personally, I have been in good terms of my budget which have been growing by now. Savings are also larger than before.
Question here is who will propose a petition to stop this kind of acts by the government and is there really a large amount of people who will support it?

"Gambling is the wagering of money or something of value on an event with an uncertain outcome, with the primary intent of winning money or material goods."

Um, that sounds exactly like trading, even more so when it comes to leveraged stuff. Nothing to be ashamed of. It's a bit disingenuous to pretend it's something other than that.

Is government really trying to ban leverage trading in UK? Why? Because it is like gambling? Why not just ban real gambling altogether. Not a  good excuse to ban leverage trading in my opinion

being honest, I would say that I would feel frustrated, in my country for example, is a country that is full of corruption, the government is very corrupt and incompetent and is increasing the poverty that my country has. And you see, I've told you that my country is a poor country, and what the corrupt and incompetent government does? create barriers for the poor to have no business and not have better living conditions

I like to point out that derivatives and leverage trading is not the only thing they are planning on banning in the UK. They are also planning to ban the most basic trading in the market which is retail investing. What they mean by retail investing is us the basic consumers who are planning to participate in any exchange to trade. If they go ahead with this direction they will be no different than what India has done to their crypto industry, they even have the guts to slap it in their face when they plan to release their own government sanctioned crypto.

Yep, I've got no problem with the label. People just need to get over their hangups about gambling.

I know professional gamblers, professional traders. It's not for everybody and most people who do it casually will probably lose money. But hey, what's wrong with losing a little money? The pros need to take their profits from someone. :D

I guess that the issue they have is with cryptocurrency and not trading generally, if you look at FOREX trading, even government do participate in it and has lots of companies set up to also trade on behalf of government with government money, but looking at cryptocurrency, they are yet to still understand the technology of cryptocurrency, and we cannot rush them into knowing about this new system, with time, it will gradually creep into their operations too and they will learn to accept it.

We already have some countries that are already friendly with cryptocurrency, and they have no issue trading it, so long it brings development to their economy financially, what I thought UK would do is to bring best hand that will understand how to trade cryptocurrency, so they don’t lose their money to best hands in other countries if that has been their fear.

I dont think that we really have professional gamblers because gambling is a game of luck

Sadly that's quite true. Even in the place I work in (IT industry) most of my colleagues are unaware of bitcoin.
I wonder which world they are living in because how can you not know of the most trending thing going on despite you being an IT employee.
A few those who know still thinks that it's not gonna succeed in the long run since it has already dumped hard.
I did try to change their opinion about bitcoin by telling them it's benefits and all but I didn't see it working out.
I think bitcoin will just take it's own time before it would be widely accepted just like the internet.

Among all reasons, lack of trading knowledge is surely not the main reason why authorities are looking to ban some types of trading. You gave the example of UK ban, as per my knowledge authorities are most skeptical about binary trading. They aren't looking to ban all kinds of trading. And, moreover, it is not possible to ban all kind of trading and derivatives since these activities are the basis of mobilization of funds in the economy which is very necessary for economic development.
Coming to binary trading, even I consider binary trading as a sort of gambling since one is wagering money on the future value of security and there is equal chance of losing your capital if you make wrong decision which is essence of gambling. It is not exactly like traditional option trading and more of a gambling niche.

Gambling is a game of luck which you are quite right, but there are some gambling games that does not rely only on luck but strategies, we have some gambling that requires strategies and skills, same way that trading also require strategies. That is why leveraging is not for everyone, and it is not what anyone who is not a pro trader should really get involved with, otherwise.

It will be like gambling and I guess that is why UK government are seeing leveraging as trade of luck, because you operate in a volatile market and you can never predict exactly what could happen at a particular time, leveraging has really made lots of people commit suicide when they lose their money, and until you become a pro trader before you should ever think of playing with leverage at all.

The issue of misconception about bitcoin is not something that is just happening. To some other people they just believe its an illegal 'thing' without taking their own ample time to even understand what it is about but just be myopic about their thinking. To some other people, its just something gamblers use, while to others, its for the money launderers. I think changing the narrative is on the active participants who are one way or the other have something to do with crypto and I have seen quite a number of those discussions happening. I have seen conferences held and discussion forums where crypto enthusiasts have made reasonable comments on the polity and by those actions would things change.

Risk involving might be same but both were done for different cause with the resemblance of making money that is why people consider crypto trading as well gambling,if they consider for this reason then they should have to say traditional investments are also as gambling and ban them since we cannot say that there will be any assured return on it.Moreover the fiat from any government is the biggest scam so ban them first before talking about others.

Gambling is quite different from trading and I don’t know why people keep promoting the ideas of leverage trading as a gambling. I have been trading for long and I can attest to the fact that trading is worthwhile and we can become professionals in it like other professions. I think we would need to educate the governments and other financial institutions concern how regulatory authority should see trade and gambling in other to stop this unnecessary banning of leverage trade.

Everything got risks, when it comes to gambling and trading the risk is very big. Leverage trading/binary option trading is always related with gambling for some reason. Another thing that makes people and government to have a comparison of bitcoin with gambling is based on its increased usage as well as the early days use on gambling in large scale than other needs.

This crypto market is already standing up for 10 years and we do already see the progress when it comes to adoption but we cant really deny that there were still some government or countries that do have still that negativity views towards bitcoin due to that decentralized feature which is the primary thing that they don't really like.
About on the topic if its being banned or prohibited then you wont have any choice but to abide with the law or else then you do know the consequences behind.

Leverage is somewhat really like a gambling but eventually this is totally different if you do try to compare it on sole gambling games.This thing will turn out to be a gamble if you
do not know on what you are doing or simply you trading up just having the behavior of gambling and this is when it considered to be one. Government are way too overreacting about this issue and its somewhat exaggerated.

I agree, there are major difference here: when you gamble, expect your money to lose because there is what we call house edge. As compare to trading wherein you have total control of your capital and you have a good chance to make money in the long run. So it's really profitable specially for those who treat trading as a profession.

Government education though is futile which regards to crypto trading. Most of them are afraid of crypto, although there are countries who have regulated it and became successful specially in Asian region. But it is still a long way to go.

Leveraging and binary option is even still far better than gambling because it is not much of a game of luck, it is something that if you apply a very great strategy to, you will be sure of making money from it, but gambling, there is no way that you can ever use strategy for it, it then strictly pure game of luck.

Now when it come to bitcoin and gambling, government does not really know what they are doing by liking both because it has no correlation at all, the main purpose of bitcoin is for investment and people only saw that little opportunity of investing in it, but gambling is just a game that requires the service of cryptocurrency to get better in its operation, so there is no much similarity between the bitcoin system and gambling system at all.

We cant take that away from the government if they want to ban gambling in their country but it will just open an oppurtunity to those who wants to run illegal gambling in their country or just go under ground. I would rather go for regulation than total ban.

I think people like that must educated, or at least they know basic of trading so they not say it like gambling. Actually it is true if people trade without analysis, it will like gambling because they don't know if will get profit or not. But maybe for ban or make regulation about it i think it is already too far. Not means they do bad things, but will be better if they know what is trading and anything inside it.

If they know exactly how to make profits in trading, i think they won't banned it at all. Trading is very much different from gambling because you are making good income from trading if you have the fundamental and technical skills while gambling only make most of your money lose even how often you gamble. You still end up being a loser most of the time.

Some governments don't know how ppl can get benefits on doing trading with crypto currency . That's why they just want to banned everything  that related to crypto for some purpose only wherein nonsense ..they don't think how crypto can change ppl lives . For them all are illegal even it can help the community to earn more especially those who don't have work and not degree holder that cant sustain their financial needs everyday day.

That is because they don't understand what leverage is, and they judge that leverage is part of gambling. They didn't realize that with leverage trading, people can get more profit. Or it's because they never try to do leverage trading. They want to dominate our life, but they never think about the solution for people on how people can get more money for their life. They only think about themselves without thinking the public, and if they still do that, I guess that will be a big demonstration from the people to against them.

There is a resemblance but it is still different.

We have our goals, we predict on a given price chart that month. Gambling usually relies on luck, and what I said might be the same with sports betting, well, I don't know what to say. This is getting more worse, they are limiting the areas where people should earn, that is the reason why a lot of people hate them more.

The ones who requested to ban everything have a huge amount of grudge within theirselves towards us, maybe their businesses are going down due to traders and that's their way of fixing things. Maybe they are bunch of old dudes who do not know anything about modern trading with crypto currencies, couldn't they just learn how it goes and join us instead of trying to destroy the new way of us making legit money?