Quote from: Hispo on July 20, 2025, 08:44:07 PM

Quote from: internetional on July 20, 2025, 08:33:25 PM

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To me, running a financial market always seemed more profitable than running a casino.
But in crypto, is it the other way around? Are casinos making more money than trading platforms?

Gambling and trading platforms use two completely different business models to keep their companies and their pockets full of money.
When we talk about casinos it is the house (a big accumulation of money and wealth) versus the luck of gamblers, the owners of the casino benefit from statistics and the edge set by the house itself from the beginning, the more each gambler play on the website the more likely is for the house to be profitable and earn money.

On the other hand, exchanges and brokers are different they benefit from the volume because they charge a small fee for allowing their customers to have access to the market liquidity, it does not matter for the broker if traders lose or win, as long as there is volume, they win. The casino owners cannot say the same, as the idea behind the casino is for the house always to win and gamblers to have fun/ thrill out their sessions.

In a casino you can only gamble. On a exchange you can trade, but if you go straight for futures market and use leverage then you would have already crossed the line of trading and stepped into gambling territory.

But there are more things that casinos and brokers have in common. A casino without volume is not going to make money and they are much less flexible in player limitations and odds adjustment. Casinos with high volume can actually take a cut from an event no matter how that event ends just by recalculating the odds up to a point where a significant pool of money has been built by gamblers betting against and for something, but by adjusting the, the casino can take a cut from the pool they don't have to pay out anymore no matter how the event ends.

Without volume, casinos have the same problem as brokers. Unless they have huge financial backing, they can't go without single gambler limitations or otherwise they go broke if one gambler hits a massive jackpot.

I don't know in how far brokers engage themselves in being the counterpart to future contracts and other trading activities. If they are strictly adhering to being just a broker taking a cut from the volume, then it is true, but they would still need volume in the first place because otherwise traders would go somewhere else. It's the same with strong limitations for gamblers in a casino, they would go elsewhere.