When you open a cryptocurrency exchange app these days, you may get the illusion that the world of technical finance, once filled with obscure K-lines, Bollinger bands, and MACD indicators, is being replaced by a more intuitive and primitive interface.
There's no need to calculate leverage multiples, no need to worry about strike prices, and all that's left on the screen are two giant buttons: "Yes" or "No."
Some time ago. Binance launched the "event contract" feature. This may seem like a minor expansion of the product line, but it's actually a profound signal to the industry. When the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges began to simplify financial transactions into "binary betting", we have to face an embarrassing reality: the crypto market is tearing off the "value investment" cloth, to the "chain of casinos The crypto market is tearing off the cover of "value investment" and casting the most ambiguous glance to the "casino on the chain".
First, the "binary options" in financial garb.
The so-called "event contract", if we peel off its Web3 fashionable packaging, its core is actually the traditional financial circle has long been familiar with even once severely cracked down on the product - binary options.
Unlike traditional futures contracts, users do not need to hold assets, nor do they need to judge the specific magnitude of price increases or decreases. All you need to do is ask a multiple choice question: "At 16:00 this afternoon, will the price of bitcoin be higher than 95,000 dollars?"
If you're right, you get a fixed return; if you're wrong, you get nothing.
This mechanism is a brilliant solution to two of the most common pain points for retail investors:
- The barriers are too high: traditional contracts require an understanding of margin, leverage, and funding rates, and the slightest miscalculation can result in a blown position.
- Feedback is too slow: spot hoarding often requires months or even years of waiting.
Event contracts take all this "down to earth". It doesn't have the fear of losing your position (because you've calculated your maximum loss the moment you buy), but it retains the instantaneous thrill of betting. It no longer requires the user to study the project fundamentals, TVL or number of active users like an investor, it only requires the user to have a gambler's intuition.
This is the ultimate product simplification, but also the ultimate financial degradation.
Second, the "dopamine economy" under the anxiety of traffic.
Why have headline exchanges such as Cryptocurrency and Crypto.com recently entered this track?
The answer lies in the awkward market environment of 2024-2025.
This cycle is known as the "no takeover" bull market. Bitcoin is oscillating at high levels, with institutional funds brought in by ETFs recognizing only the big pie, while at the other end of the spectrum, VC-backed "high valuation, low liquidity" tech coins are peaking at the top of their game and then plummeting, breaking the hearts of retail investors.
When the "value discovery" fails, the liquidity in the hands of retail investors began to flood to Memecoin and PVP on the chain, since buying the so-called technology public chain is also down, it is better to go to punch the hyenas, or go to the Polymarket to bet on who can be elected president.
Exchanges are feeling a deep chill in this stock game. They have found that volatility itself has become the only commodity.
The launch of "event contracts" is a strong prescription for exchanges to retain the attention of their users. They need a more high-frequency, more stimulating, faster dopamine secretion tool to combat the blood-sucking effect of the chain's dirt dog disk. Rather than letting users go to the chain to play "PvP", exchanges prefer users to play "guess the size" in their own App. This is essentially a battle for the stock of funds and user time.
Third, from the "prediction market" to "price betting" out of shape
Some people will argue: prediction markets such as Polymarket is of social value (I also plan to write an article on this point), it can reflect the real probability of voting through the funds.
But it is important to understand that Polymarket is about "information aggregation", whereas the "price event contracts" offered by exchanges are about "speculation".
When the theme of prediction is narrowed from "who will be elected president" and "whether the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates" (macro information game) to "whether the price of BTC will rise or fall in the next hour" (random guess), it loses its informational value. When the information game is narrowed down to "whether the price of BTC will rise or fall in the next hour" (random guessing), it loses its function as a "predictor" of information and is completely reduced to a pure probability game.
This trend is leading to a "bad money driving out good money" effect. Who wants to read obscure white papers when the thrill and potential gain can be realized by simply "placing a bet"? Who wants to support a deal under construction for the long term? The flow of capital is accelerating from long-term "Build" to short-term "Bet".
Fourth, walking on the regulatory tightrope of carnival
For exchanges, although this move can be a short-term increase in daily activity and revenue, but may also be a time bomb.
In the United States, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has always been tough on the prediction market and the regulation of binary options. Kalshi and Polymarket tug-of-war has not yet come to an end, the regulator's core red line is: is this a financial derivative, or illegal gambling?
The exchanges are trying to walk a tightrope between the two by emphasizing "cooling-off periods" and "risk warnings". But once this "gambling-like" function leads to huge losses for a large number of retail investors in a short period of time, the iron fist of regulation is likely to follow. By that time, not only this one function may be affected, but the entire exchange's compliance path.
More brutally for users, the event contract "mathematical expectation" is often negative. Compared with the spot is set can choose to "play dead" to do time friends, event contracts, the only end of the "instant zero". This is the fastest way of harvesting retail investors' funds.
V. Conclusion: Sage Time After Dopamine
Binance's launch of the event contract may not be justified in terms of business logic - responding to human nature and providing users with the "excitement" they want.
But it is still sad. When the cryptocurrency industry was born, it promised to reshape financial freedom through decentralization, and to build a permission-free value network. Now, after several rounds of bulls and bears, the industry seems to be stuck in a bottleneck of innovation, the most able to mobilize the market sentiment of innovation, but became more convenient "betting tools".
When exchanges began to distribute dice to users, we knew that the idealistic era driven by technological vision was leaving us.
For those of us who are in the middle of it, recognizing whether this is "investment" or "consumption" is the last line of defense to protect our wallets.