If there is no speculation in the cycle, survival is impossible.
Written by: Lauris
Compiled by: AididiaoJP, Foresight News
Hyper-Gambling is an Inevitable Trend
The core of games has always been about risk, speculation, and dopamine.
Casinos are the most direct form: blackjack, poker, slot machines, these are pure probability stimulation. Without the gambling market, sports events would be difficult to expand. Trading cards became popular because the lottery mechanism of unpacking and drawing cards makes people chase rare cards. Even decorative skins in video games have spawned underground economies, where rarity and speculation are more important than utility.
This is not a flaw; speculation itself is a feature. It gives games stickiness, spreadability, and community. When risk participation enters the cycle, attention grows exponentially.
We call this "hyper-gambling": merging speculative game mechanisms with financial speculation into an entertainment base with spreadability. And with the support of on-chain infrastructure, this becomes inevitable: liquidity, verifiability, composability, and globalization.
Negative Example: Why the "Play-to-Earn" Model Collapsed
The previous wave of "crypto games" Play-to-Earn essentially misunderstood the cycle. It once seemed unstoppable: Axie Infinity's explosive growth, rapid expansion of guilds in Southeast Asia, billions of dollars pouring in, but then everything collapsed.
Why? Because P2E mistook games for work.
Players were not playing but extracting value. The cycle itself was not fun, but labor. Once speculative capital flow dried up, there was no support. Games never expanded through labor, but through play. And the core of play has always been speculative.
This is why most "crypto game" attempts are doomed to fail unless speculation is integrated into the core function. Ponzi schemes and inflationary tokens no longer work. What people have always wanted is a combination of risk stimulation and entertainment breadth.
This is also why every on-chain game is quietly reintroducing betting mechanisms.
They realized the obvious fact: if there is no speculation in the cycle, survival is impossible.
Macro Perspective: Hyper-Gambling as Market Design
Speculation has always been the most common form of play. From ancient Roman dice games to modern casinos, from sports betting to unpacking Pokémon cards, the common thread has always been: risk is entertainment.
The internet financialized it, crypto gave it liquidity, and on-chain made it programmable.
This completely changed the game rules:
- Liquidity became instant and global.
- Every bet or interaction is verifiable.
- Market movement itself became a distribution engine.
This is why most people's imagined "crypto games" are destined to fail. Without a speculative cycle, it's just a Web2 game with worse user experience. Ponzi schemes and inflationary tokens cannot survive in the current environment. The only games that can expand on-chain are those directly connected to the market.
This is the inevitability of hyper-gambling. It is not a side note, but a new market design where play and speculation are inseparable, and attention itself becomes a distribution track.
What Prediction Markets Get Right
Prediction markets are a type of game. The market is an entertainment cycle; the reward is the truth at settlement. Prediction markets, whether on the surface or as the underlying support of consumer experience, will become the next huge long-tail, high-variance game on-chain.
They are effective because:
- Small capital pools generate returns. Retail investors can drive trends; price impacts are clear and addictive.
- Settlement creates stakes. Results are resolved, certificates exist, consequences are content.
- Odds are memes. Implied probabilities become charts, screenshots, shareable narratives.
- Reflexivity is innate: betting drives price → price triggers discussion → discussion drives more betting.
They persist by fusing speculation with consequences and distribution.
Potential Long-Term Weaknesses of Prediction Markets
Classic prediction markets are narrow: binary, slow, fragmented. They excel at handling consequences but struggle to sustain. The technology is amazing, able to gather perspectives to seek truth, but most trading volume still comes from large players and major market participants rather than retail investors.
The next wave will improve its microstructure, not just the shell:
- Treat each game as a micro-market with a clear yield curve (same-bet lottery, AMM, or order book).
- Design around visible market movements to give users a sense of agency.
- Adopt faster settlement rhythms to maintain cycle vitality.
- Allow games, tasks, and creators to challenge and access shared liquidity.
The standard cycle is: attention → risk pricing → certificate. Everything else is just auxiliary.
Sustainable on-chain games will be less like labor cycles and more like prediction markets with better skins, micro-liquidity pools, shareable odds, continuous consequences, and reflexive distribution.
Why On-Chain Makes This Inevitable
Crypto provides the perfect base for speculative play:
- Instant liquidity - bets and results can be settled without intermediaries.
- Composable markets - each game connects to shared infrastructure.
- Transparent odds - verifiable fairness is built into the chain.
- Meme amplification - tokens transform each result into a narrative.
The next wave won't be like Axie's labor cycle. It will be like an arcade hall connected to the financial system, where each machine is a micro-market, every action is priced, and each new player adds liquidity to the cycle.
