Adam Conover states in his youtube-video “Everything in America is Gambling now” that gambling has evolved from yesterday being too sleazy for mainstream media to today existing everywhere.

Preliminary figures indicate that total gambling revenue exceeded $67 billion in the U.S. in 2024.

Adam reminds us that in the old days you had to go to the racetrack, the casino or break room for the office betting pool to blow you life savings. Now gambling is available everywhere at all times. Your cellphone lives in your pocket 24/7.

Gambling in your pocket:

  • Is antisocial and solitary,
  • Gives you continuous fast feedback,
  • Bestows you with unpredictable rewards, and
  • Never ends…

America is not alone in increased gambling related revenue. In Sweden gambling revenue for licensed bookies has increased by 2.8% second quarter 2024 compared to 2023. Commercial online-gaming and betting increased by 9.2%.

These are only the official numbers. There are other unregulated means to gamble. Notably are meme-coins from influencers like Hawk Tuah Girl and the Spouses Trump.

Hawk digital coin allegedly follows the classic “rug-pull”-scheme, this from a BBC-article:

Her "Hawk" digital coin hit a $490m market cap shortly after it launched on 
Wednesday, before suddenly losing more than 95% of its value within hours.

Coinbase defines rug-pull:

  • A rug pull is a scenario in the cryptocurrency world where developers abandon a project after raising assets, leaving participants with worthless tokens.

The Trump meme-coin has further implications for society than a classic rug-pull, according to a wired-article:

“This is going to create a kind of ruling that will trickle down to all the 
different agencies: America is embracing crypto,” says Demelza Hays, digital 
asset portfolio manager at investment firm Zeltner & Co and chief economist at 
the crypto trade publication CoinTelegraph. “I think we’re going to see [many] 
celebrity memecoins.”

But mobile games like Genshin Impact can also be gambling.

The term for these games is gacha-games which Wikipedia defines as:

"A gacha game (Japanese: ガチャ ゲーム, Hepburn: gacha gēmu) is a game, typically 
a video game, that implements the gachapon machine style mechanics. Similar to 
loot boxes, Live Service gacha games entice players to spend in-game currency to 
receive a random in-game item. Some in-game currency generally can be gained 
through game play and staying up-to-date, and some by purchasing it from the 
game publisher using real-world funds."

Wikipedia continues to state:

"Digital Gacha games have been criticized for being addictive, and are often 
compared to gambling due to the incentive to spend real-world money on chance-
based rewards."

At the end of Wikipedia’s definition is the part “Criticisms”:

"Gacha games have faced significant criticism for their resemblance to gambling, 
largely due to their reliance on chance-based mechanics to acquire desirable in-
game items. Studies in Europe and the United States indicate that a substantial 
portion of young players who engage in gacha games develop gambling-like 
behaviors. For instance, research has shown that over 50% of juveniles who 
participate in gacha games exhibit some gambling tendencies, with around 5% 
developing problematic habits and 10% showing early signs of gambling addiction."

It is disturbing these games has such a huge user base consisting of kids.

In a first-of-its kind study from the University of California San Diego Rady School of Management, researches have identified comprehensive insights into the positive and negative impacts of online gambling legalization on tax revenue and gambling behaviors in the U.S.

One of the article’s author Kenneth C. Wilbur has this to say about the chances of winning:

“Of the more than 700,000 gamblers that we studied, 96% percent appeared to lose 
money to online gambling,” Wilbur said. “Only 4% made money from online betting. 
That is by design. Online gambling platforms often ban or throttle frequent 
winners’ accounts. There is no right to gamble.”