In my opinion it can be done just because there are quite a lot of matches and if you win big two or three times you can reach higher spot. I don't know what bets exactly were made to tell if that's the case however.
I don't think it's vital that bitcoin is backed by any sort of other commodity or financial instrument.Sure,good think is it may result in some sort of stability but even then this may hamper bitcoin's growth and potential as an independent currency.
Yeah,it seems we're in a process where different altcoins happen to be not so what they have been supposed to be and it turns out to be just a different story.And now this patters in being more and more recoginisable by more people.