There's something to winning. And even if we didn't win, maybe it inspired us to dream and go do something we wanted. the contrarians, they can be "damn the lottery for a free trip. I'm going to go anyway."
Discussion
yeh, nah, casino is casino
it's a contract where they mostly will not give you something offered unless they decide, it's not a contract, that's what usury means
yeah, they get entertainment, but don't pretend it's anything more than a circus
bitcoin mining is different... the random selection of the winner is a way to prevent anyone from having influence over the issuance of the currency or acquiring an unfair share of the issuance
you win tokens from bitcoin mining in exact proportion to the resources you expend to get them... large scale mines are needed to do that alone, or you can pool and they distribute the winning in proportion with the provabel effort you expended
this is why bitcoin is a digital commodity... it's a contract, you get exactly what you pay for, no more, no less
the only caveat is you need a lot of hashpower to win a block by yourself, and so there is pooling schemes which use protocols that aim to prove you are working fairly towards the goal and how much effort you are expending
I agree about the casino stuff and the tokens taking rent in our heads and not having any value.
But then I started thinking about lots in life. And people being afraid to try to gamble with their skills/potential.
It's all sort of a gamble right? Perhaps guided by wisdom.
And then businesses themselves are a gamble. And investing is a gamble.
How about "Gambling with a vision" is something I could get on board with.
it's not a gamble if you have a good measure of the odds of success
that's a bet
gambling is where you hope that you will get an undue reward
Ok. So investing sounds more like a bet...
that's what should prompt you to do it
vesting is really just a synonym for saving, or stacking capital into something
it is literally folly (foolish behavior, self delusion) to vest your resources into things you have a low chance of success in, and if you do it based on shiny sparkling lights and weasel words you are definitely a fool
like, my bet, when i first started doing Go programming back in 2016 was that it would eventually yield me something
i am now in a financial position that several of my respectod compatriots have a sense of envy for, because this is some serious capital i have acquired and as such i am confident that one way or another i can turn my sunk capital (which was some 8 years of hard work, at some points almost dangerous) as it is not sunk, this is welath i have acquired, my ability to write software that few spend such a large amount of time to develop... it's not talent, though my talent at thinking did help me pick this.
i don't think i have fully yielded as much as i could out of this either, my pay rate is probably pretty low on the market for what i can do... and partly this is because i want to apply that capital to something that has a psychic profit for me of promoting freedom and decentralizing power