A newbie trading crypto using future contract clearly doesn't understand what he is doing and playing a casino (rigged) would be the same thing.
With futures, you can lose also more of what you have deposited. You can get busted just in a few minutes for a quick change of the market.
There are to many reasons to stay far away. Unfortunately marketing is targeting newbies because they know most of the money on these markets come from them.

I think that sport betting has a lot to grow offering new markets and new games to play.
I would see an incentive for both industries since there is a lot of synergie: Crypto and Btc are two great instruments since provide quick liquidity and automatic settlements.
Sport bettings has more game volume because and players behind there is an entire (rich) industry. In some countries this is able to finance the sport (like horse racing bet in Italy).
I like much more to gamble in sport because I was a player in a junior league and I find easy to guess certain outcomes

I am not surprised at all. btc and decentralization achieved are two concepts that are not easy to be understood.
Even 4% it's an huge amount of people if you consider how few people are able to invest money or just saving it!
I think that this percentage could grow just a little in the next few years. Most of people will embrace bitcoin "inside" other products or maybe directly in their Nations.

there are at least a couple of big gambling companies that have as main operation provide the odds to bookmakers.
They have (from the scratch) the best tech, instruments, connection with fields and operators that you could always dream.
In some rare cases they can make mistake but this is becoming pretty irrelevant versus the whole business conducted.

I am curious to see how Thailand would allow foreigners tourist to spend crypto/btc
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/thailand-launch-crypto-to-baht-conversion-foreign-tourists-2025-08-18/
If you think that they have a good quality of life with honest price, plus some luxury cheap here... well this could be a nice place to evaluate for btc change.

Last but not least I would mention also Poland and Czech as btc friendly place compared to the close EU countries

Lot 1 : 0.01 BTC
Lot 2 : 0.0045 BTC
Lot 3 : 0.0045 BTC
Lot 4 : 0.011 BTC

Lot 5 : 0.0116 BTC

Lot 5 : 0.011 BTC

Lot 5 =  0.0102 BTC

Lot 5 =  0.0098 BTC

Lot 4 =  0.0076 BTC
Lot 5 =  0.0096 BTC

Lot 4 =  0.0072 BTC
Lot 5 =  0.0092 BTC

Lot 3 =  0.0048 BTC
Lot 4 =  0.0068 BTC
Lot 5 =  0.0088 BTC

Lot 3 =  0.0046 BTC
Lot 4 =  0.0066 BTC
Lot 5 =  0.0086 BTC

Lot 1: 0.0036 BTC
Lot 2: 0.0031 BTC
Lot 3 =  0.0042 BTC
Lot 4 =  0.0061 BTC
Lot 5 =  0.0082 BTC

It's an interesting question because it could have an impacts in trends for alt and stable coins!

There was a period with each btc txid above 30-40 usd clearly impossible to be used with any kind of gambling site.
Nowadays fees are really cheap + there are many easy way to make tx in a layer2.

I would say btc is stll the king. (period).
Of course any palyers based on specific economy and time of their life would decide if gamble with btc/alt or stable coins!

just few people are able to get an earning (stable) from gambling.yes you can get a lucky year. yes you can win even a large once at all.
but this is pretty different from earning everytime from the same market/event.
Most of the times people looks and remember only the approach for the win "multiply money in a few minutes".
Just few people are able to enjoy the fun time and not see the malicious side of gambling.

When I started to use btc it was everyone talking about bazaar. Probably this has been launched and could be another option....
About Cryptocurrencies... there are some shops that could accept eth doge xrp and other "major" altcoins. In any case, it would be easier to exchange with a wallet or a DeFi your crypto in btc/usdt and use this for your purchases.
I have seen few months ago this website from the same authors of scarce.city, check https://satstash.io/ "buy and sell items with btc"

I would find this kind of exercises something more similar to a game and not to something real.
we don't need other people that invest in btc. for sure it will be a bigger mistake if you get people (forced to invest) into bitcoin and they will realize later... a bear market!
How could we handle thousands of elder and salary man that could lost around 80% in few months?
No one could afford to gamble in something that has no track record or it's not fully understood.
this is both the basic and big advantages to use btc in my opinion

getting free data only for betting sounds like a free park in a drug store.
yes this is an advantage versus other bookmakers. but this could also be seen (even if really really small) as a way to force people in gambling!
Offered alone, this is a kind of support for players (like a small bonus) otherwise it could be opinable like if they request bets and so on.