It is already safe to say that 2024 has brought two major trends to the market: Tap-to-Earn and prediction markets. Mass interest in the former arose on the wave of success of "tapalok", which added crypto elements to basic casual games, while the latter owes its popularity to the US presidential race.
Despite all the differences, these two trends have something in common - the desire to simplify the user experience to the limit and the promise of easy money. Oleg Cash Coin shares his opinion with ForkLog readers on why the crypto market is currently increasingly reminiscent of an ordinary casino.
Kings of the Game
The first reason for adopting the simplification trend was the reaction of Binance co-founder and head of Binance Labs Yi He to complaints about the listing process.
"We aim to offer projects that are popular, in demand and relatively reliable. But this does not mean that the value of all these projects will increase," the co-founder of the exchange said.
Part of the crypto community accused Binance of lowering standards after listing the meme token Neiro, whose market cap at the time was about $15 million. In less than two weeks, the figure grew 30-fold to $450 million.
The listing of such assets and subsequent vertical growth is quite common for the crypto market, as are accusations of insider trading. However, it is worth paying attention to the position of Binance.
In response to the criticism, Yi He wrote a lengthy article. In it, she stated that the exchange is forced to operate in this way simply because customers demand it, and the era of selling off serious projects' tokens at low prices is ending along with the growth and maturation of the market.
“[Bianance’s] product must serve the majority to have a chance to become the financial infrastructure of the future world,” Yi He said.
So Binance is simply following the crowd, taking profits from social trends. And that's a viable strategy, as we can see from the exchange's place in the crypto world.
For the same reasons, the market is so greedy for new cheap and fast ways to make money: the era of one-day gaming tokens and applications without a roadmap and plans for the future is coming.
The mechanics of attracting users are increasingly reminiscent of online casinos and casual mobile games, which have extremely simple rules and do not require special skills or time spent on training. Come, click and get.
This sector is particularly evident in Tap-to-Earn apps like Notcoin and Hamster Kombat, where users' attention is harvested for a small reward and then resold to advertisers.
Greed and the desire to quickly create value out of nothing add signs of mass gambling addiction to new trends. One of the unpleasant features of this disorder is, as a rule, a person’s imaginary confidence that he can increase his chances of winning through intense analytical work. This may be partly true, but it is worth reminding: “the chances of finding a successful meme coin on the PumpFun platform for profitable investment turned out to be lower than making a winning bet in a casino.”
The market of meme tokens and "tapalok" only complicates the principles laid down in conventional slot machines, to which an element of crypto technologies has simply been added. But there is a more illustrative example of a "casino" in cryptocurrencies - prediction markets.
The Black or Red Prediction Market
Classic roulette has only two betting options: black and red (plus zero, which plays in favor of the bank). Every casino visitor understands that this is a game of pure luck, but it also leaves participants with a choice.
The binary event "prediction" market with a clear "yes or no" bet is structured somewhat differently. The trend has gained mass popularity in the run-up to the US elections: in 2024, trading volumes on Polymarket have already exceeded $1 billion.
The problem is that binary options markets are promoted as an expression of the unconditional “wisdom of the crowd,” which incentivizes participants to act wisely. Unfortunately, this largely controversial concept is being enthusiastically supported by crypto market leaders.
Thus, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin is sure that Polymarket is considered gambling only by those who do not understand the essence of the project. In his opinion, such platforms reflect reality more objectively than the media and social networks.
No analytics
The problem is that the current binary betting forecast format has nothing under the hood. To understand this, it is enough to compare prediction markets with the tool that calculates probabilities on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME).
For example, a “bet” on the Fed’s decision raised nearly $60 million in liquidity on Polymarket, where participants were asked to simply guess how much the interest rate would be cut. The data on this platform creates the illusion that it reflects the likelihood of something happening.
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