Crypto Platforms Like Gambling: Users Seek High-Risk

When Kim Kardashian paid a fine in 2022 for promoting a crypto token without revealing she was paid for it, and Matt Damon told us that " fortune favours the brave ," in a crypto currency ad, it became clear that crypto had crossed over into pop culture.

But beneath the celebrity sheen and Super Bowl ads, there is something that feels more familiar.

Crypto trading platforms, where millions of people buy and sell digital currencies, don't just look like casinos. In many ways, they function like them. Behind the charts, tokens and talk of innovation are systems that encourage risky bets while quietly profiting from user losses.

Crypto platforms are not just about buying and selling digital assets. Many of these platforms are designed to blur the line between investing and gambling, profiting directly from user losses.

Drawing on recent research conducted by a group of Concordia University-affiliated researchers (including ourselves), we look at how crypto platforms actually operate. These crypto exchanges combine financial tools with game-like features to turn high-risk speculation into a form of entertainment. Meanwhile, they downplay the details on how the systems actually work - and how they make money from users.

A case study in platform design

Consider BitMEX , a major exchange that gained notoriety for offering users up to 100x leverage on crypto trades. This leverage trading option let traders control large positions with relatively little capital, similar to placing big bets with borrowed chips.

The risks are obvious, but the platform's interface makes it feel like a high-speed game with a big potential prize at the end. The slick design, real-time stats, visual cues and feedback loops are all tools used to encouraged repeated engagement.

BitMEX demonstrates how crypto platforms turn financial risk into a compelling user experience. Even though BitMEX has declined in market share, its influence lives on. The gamified interfaces, leverage tools and social dynamics it helped popularize are now common across crypto exchanges.

These are not superficial features. They are built into the architecture of platforms and are central in converting trading activity into revenue.

Just as casinos rely on frequent betting rather than user success, crypto platforms often profit from volatility and volume, not from helping users make profitable investments.

When speculation becomes survival

Financialization refers to how more and more parts of economic and social life are shaped by the rules and priorities of financial markets. This includes everything from retirement planning through to investment accounts and student debt treated as a bet on future income .

In this context, crypto appears as a logical extension. It offers users a sense of financial agency amid widespread precarity. For people excluded from traditional finance or disillusioned with institutional systems, cryptocurrency promises access, autonomy and even transformation. The user is cast as an entrepreneur of the self, navigating risk in hopes of reward.

But financialization also intensifies inequality. Those who already hold capital benefit from systems of compounding return. Those without are urged to " get in early " speculate on tokens and " HODL " through downturns, often bearing disproportionate risk.

Crypto exchanges work within this system. They are not just neutral tools for trading. The platforms are built to pass risk onto users while collecting the value for themselves. As users keep trading, the platforms earn money from every move. The more people trade, the more the platforms profit, whether users win or lose.

Gamblification: Turning risk into play

Gamblification is the process by which non-gambling activities adopt the esthetics, mechanics and psychological appeal of games of chance.

Gamblification is a crucial lens for understanding how crypto exchanges maintain engagement even as users incur losses. In our study we show how features like real-time leader boards, visual effects and meme-based communities frame trading as a communal and entertaining experience. Even major losses are shared and circulated with humour and irony.

This framing helps to create a culture whereby failure is interpreted not as a structural outcome but as part of the "game." Risk-taking becomes a badge of honour; the trader becomes a "degen ," a term that ironically valorizes self-destructive investment behaviour.

In this environment, addictive patterns are reinforced and financial losses are recast as participation in a broader social experience.

Crypto platforms benefit from this cultural phenomenon. By making high-stakes speculation feel like a game, they increase convenience and encourage sustained activity. This is not accidental; it is an engineered dynamic that drives volume, visibility and, ultimately, revenue.

The double bind of crypto platforms

When financialization and gamblification come together, they produce a structure that resembles casino capitalism . Users are drawn into high-risk behaviour not only through deception but through systems that offer freedom and participation while extracting value from their activity.

The result is a contradictory user experience. On one hand, users feel empowered: they are making choices, pursuing gains and participating in a cultural moment. On the other hand, they are participating in systems that profit most when users lose. The language of innovation, autonomy and financial revolution obscures this structure.

Our research suggests that this isn't just a metaphorical resemblance to gambling. It is a structural one. Cryptocurrency platforms are built to monetize user risk in ways that closely parallel casinos. They rely on opaque systems, asymmetric information and engagement loops that benefit the platform regardless of individual user success.

The broader stakes

This intersection of financialization and gamblification matters not only for cryptocurrency users but also for anyone concerned with the direction of financial systems. As traditional finance increasingly adopts aspects of gamification , the lines between investing, speculating and gambling continue to blur.

The gamblification of finance naturalizes high-risk activity and shifts responsibility for economic outcomes onto individuals and away from platforms. It helps undermine the possibility of regulation or collective protections and treats volatility as inevitable rather than structurally-driven.

Understanding these dynamics is important for policymakers, educators and designers. Cryptocurrency is not just a new asset class; it is a testing ground for new forms of exchange, as well as extraction and control.

By analyzing its mechanics through the lenses of financialization and gamblification, we can better understand the cultural and economic stakes of digital finance.

Cryptocurrency might promise decentralization or innovation, but in practice, it reflects broader systems of dispossession and speculative risk. Users are encouraged to play a rigged game in which platforms always profit.

Amy Swiffen receives funding from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Martin A. French does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Risk Warning: Cryptocurrency is a unregulated virtual notoriously volatile instrument with a high level of risk. Any news, opinions, research, data, or other information contained within this website is provided for news reporting purposes as general market commentary and does not constitute investment or trading advice.