The Casino Economy

Fintech started as infrastructure to better your future self. Mint would warn you that you’d spent too much on coffee. Wealthfront made it easy to route part of your paycheck into savings. For adults and young adults alike, it was critical infrastructure for budgeting and investing

The space has evolved, and it feels closer to a Las Vegas fever dream of (often complex) financial instruments aimed at helping users "swing for the fences."

Robinhood’s interface is so slick it feels like a game. The subreddit r/WallStreetBets has 15 million members, most sharing screenshots of huge wins (and only rarely the losses).

Sports betting apps send push notifications for wagers on whether the next play will be a run or pass, all in real time as the user watches the game.

Prediction markets now let you bet on almost anything: election outcomes, Fed decisions, even celebrity breakups.

Retail brokers highlight short-term options and crypto. Sportsbooks push micro-bets and parlays. Prediction markets turn news events into tradable bets with promises of big returns. The whole system is amplified by endless “wins” posted on social media and by a generation raised on mobile screens but feeling trapped. Increasingly convinced they have little agency in climbing the economic ladder.

The perfect storm of product design (gamification loops), distribution (mobile-first), and macro-demography (Millennial/Gen-Z balance sheet stress) has led to a new wave of financial gamification, and it seems to be evolving at an ever-faster pace.

The outcome? Simply more. More swings. More bets. More chances that one big win might change your financial life forever.