Investor and market commentator Ritesh Jain has linked the rapid rise of betting apps, prediction markets and speculative trading to what he described as a deeper structural problem in the global economy.
In a post on X, Jain argued that years of aggressive monetary expansion have left many people feeling that traditional avenues of wealth creation no longer deliver the outcomes they once did.
Jain claimed that the root of the problem lies in the US Federal Reserve's expansion of the money supply during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Citing data from the Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED), he said the US M2 money supply increased from $15.4 trillion on January 1, 2020, to $21.6 trillion on January 1, 2022, and stood at $22.6 trillion as of March 2026.
According to him, while the liquidity injection fuelled asset prices, wages failed to keep pace, leaving ordinary households grappling with inflation and a declining sense of financial security.
Drawing from his observations across countries, Jain said he has found growing frustration among households in India, Canada, Australia and Germany.
He wrote that even high-income earners in India feel they are "running on a treadmill that keeps accelerating", while many households elsewhere continue to struggle despite having two full-time incomes.
According to Jain, this growing disconnect between effort and financial outcomes is driving what he called a "very dangerous behavioural shift".
As people lose faith in conventional paths to wealth creation, they increasingly turn to high-risk avenues in search of outsized returns.
"The explosion of betting apps and prediction markets, Kalshi, Polymarket, Dream11 and their many cousins, are not trends. They are symptoms of a broken economy," Jain wrote.
He added that the surge in futures and options trading and the sharp increase in exchange volumes reflect the same underlying trend.
According to Jain, when people stop believing that honest effort will be adequately rewarded, they begin "gambling on outcomes instead."
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