It feels like we’re in the age of the Big Gamble, doesn’t it? Most literally, the online gambling boom is making headlines worldwide, with talk of it as a public health emergency in some countries. In the UK, the proportion of children engaging in problem gambling doubled in the year 2023-24. 

Not unrelatedly, the crypto hustle has become so normalised that a significant number of young men are growing up having never used a traditional bank account – understanding money completely through the turbulent ebb and flow of digital coins. There’s nothing that can’t be bet on, as the rise of Polymarket makes painfully clear: recently, it veered into dark comedy when grindset bros argued over whether Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s outfit qualified as “a suit”. More grimly, the platform ran markets on whether the Coldplay CEO affair would end in divorce.