zlacker

The derivatives market is useful for hedging and for market efficiency. A lot of the nay-sayers I see tend to talk about how the nominal exposure is bigger than the market itself as if it were a compelling argument against it but it's not (the reason is that there is a counter-party for every "bet").

As for speculation around the "real" economy, in most cases it is widely talked about as the mother of all evil where in fact, the best way to increase the market value of a company is to turn it into a better company. And on the other end, companies go to 0 because they go bankrupt, not the other way around.

My point is that we are denying the entire market structure to punish the < 1% of bad actors, while it is quite useful for the rest.

Crypto is a different beast entirely. I have never believed in it and I still fail to see the value.