Defending against the accusation of gambling

[samdan777712]

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?

[beerlover]

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.

[Pursuer]

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.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

They think any leverage is gambling. How do you feel realizing these people want to take your livelihood away?

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.

just like the current proposed UK ban.

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?

[davis196]

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?

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.

[Coyster]

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.

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.

[legendster]

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.

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.

[hispout]

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?

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.

[TheCBF]

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?

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

[TheCBF]

If crypto trading gets banned in the UK.

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

[Reid]

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?

Looks like they are seeing a lot of average financial being are getting richer.
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?

[gentlemand]

"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.

[Ucy]

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

[Slow death]

How do you feel realizing these people want to take your livelihood away?

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

[Theb]

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.

[exstasie]

"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.

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.

[coinfinger]

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.

[Lawrenzoo]

"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.

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.

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

[pawanjain]

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.

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.

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.

[webtricks]

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?

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.