New York sues Coinbase and Gemini, seeking to halt unlicensed prediction market businesses

Probably not. The Arizona suit was tossed because the judge found the state law was preempted by federal regulation of prediction markets. If that decision holds, what NY law says will be completely irrelevant as any law they pass will be preempted.

Nah bro these are predictions as financial assets where you get a pay out if you predict right. Totally distinct from gambling because of our application and platform.

You have to take delivery of the thing you hold futures on, which doesn't happen with ordinary gambling. [That's why the price of oil futures briefly went negative in 2020](https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/8315-20) -- the people who held the futures at the time were not in a position to show up in Louisiana with a tanker, or whatever, and were desperate to get out of that obligation.

No they’re trying to say there needs to be a barrier to entry more than download app on phone.

Say what you will about s*** machines (the physical ones inside casinos and bars at least), at least they are honestly advertised . I see so many prediction market ads, and all of them use the language of business and finance to legitimize themselves. They namedrop the CFTC, call the bets contracts, talk about "getting paid" for "predictions." Put another way, these companies wouldn't be spending hand over fist to buy this fake legitimacy if it wasn't useful.

Ease of access & intensity of experience is everything. The dose is the poison. When you go to a c***** there's real intentionality behind it. You have to take time out of your day to gamble & it doesn't become interwoven in your everyday life. Even here, gambling at a c***** is still incredibly destructive for a certain kind of person where the barrier of needing to go to a c***** is still not high enough. However for most people, it's generally a lot easier to manage and you have a lot of "outs" - not being around a c***** when at home, going to support groups and doing alternative activities, etc. You do not have that luxury when its attached to a phone you need to function in modern society. Also, by turning literally everything into something you can bet on, you can never truly escape gambling in your day to day life and it begins to get normalized. When things like this are normalized, it means people who are at risk of gambling addiction but would never have been exposed get exposed, causing an explosion of new addicts. This isn't even getting into the fact that gambling 100% is a drain on society/finances and holds no serious benefit for humanity outside of making the house rich (there's a reason why it's always criminal groups behind it). It's very nature is to prey on a very base human instinct of risk vs reward to profit. It's the kind of thing that *should* be always forever until the end of time heavily regulated. I'm not saying gambling as a concept needs to be outright banned, but it's absolutely stupid that it isn't being kept on a tight leash (I think we both agree on this). There's actually pretty good parallels to alcohol here. Alcoholism used to be an absolutely massive issue - the prohibition era didn't happen just because a few party crashers were bad at having a good time. There was genuine widespread public chaos due to rampant drunken behavior. Very similar thing happened to England a few centuries ago when Gin first became all the rage. The entire reason why a "pub" exists at all is because it was a way for the government to make gin illegal but still give people an outlet for drinking - they just switched the alcohol supply to much more easy to moderate beer that was only legal in these new "public houses". Eventually regulation chilled out but the core parts of this kind of regulation still exist pretty much everywhere - in most places in western society, you not only cannot drink in public but its seen as a deeply cultural indecent thing to do. Spirits are generally only enjoyed in closed settings to appreciate them as a luxury good or as part of cocktails rather than straight. What is going on now is a lot like what went on with alcohol in our past. Except in alcohol's case you could make the argument that moderate alcohol use is actually a social/cultural good. I find it very hard to find any such argument in favor of gambling however, especially gambling that isn't done strictly between friends. At the same time, something about gambling appeals to even reasonable people. It scratches a human instinct of taking risks in a way that isn't life endangering. Making bets and winning is human nature. At least when it stays at casinos and places like Vegas, you're engaging with it in a way that is outside of regular society rather than intertwined with it. It's a much healthier way to explore a dangerous emotional high, especially when there's a strong cultural expectation that gambling is the type of thing that should exist only in these "places & times outside of society".