Noted advice… Although not sure how it’s at all applicable here.
Given the 24 hour switch on, there really isn’t anything stopping someone from removing the gambling block in time.
If someone has it on, and currently does not want to invest, but then decides on the morning, that they’ve seen the excitement on the forum, and wants to join in the fun… I think the gambling block should probably stop people investing (because it would have been an emotional decision).
But there are so many different scenarios, that you just can’t cover all bases.
For example, I’ve seen a number of people opt to have the gambling block on because they don’t gamble through choice, and don’t want their card to be compromised…
What if they don’t realise the gambling block stops the investing? They’ll miss out due to a technicality.
Note, for anyone reading, the gambling block DOES NOT stop you from investing in Monzo next week - It was a hypothetical situation
The investment sign-up flow should make them think properly about whether they’ve thought it through and made an informed choice to invest. It sounds like it’s going to be close to, if not the same as, the usual Crowdcube flow, which in some respect does its best to put people off by outlining clear risks involved.
tl;dr, people who impulsively go to invest after seeing forum excitement will get clear “You can lose all your money” warnings which should make them think twice.
Yeah I know, my point was that someone who has the gambling block on due to the fact they may struggle to control their gambling urges, could be helped if the gambling block stopped their impulsive decision to buy Monzo shares.
These are all hypotheticals though, and you just can’t cover every scenario for every different person.
Of course, what nobody has pointed out yet is that there’s a big difference between investing in Series A vs Series E. In my humble opinion investing in this round (Series E), where you are backing a company with over 500 employees, thousands of new accounts every day, a huge active community, and a £1B+ valuation isn’t really gambling - it looks much more like investing in an established company than investing in three people in a garage.
Investment in general is not like casino gambling (or similar things like FOBM), where risk is precisely calculable and quantifiable, and the action->reward loop is pretty tightly closed.
Investment is very like speculative betting on an outcome (be it sports, “Will JWST be delayed again?”, etc). You take on the responsibility of estimating the risk, and the action->reward loop is (generally) longer.
The mere indeterminate length before a startup investment can be liquidated cannot itself be a determinant of ‘not gambling’, or bets like “humans will land on Mars within the next 5 decades” would not be classed as gambling. Likewise, the ‘safety’ of an investment cannot itself be a determinant of ‘not gambling’, or bets like “I bet that in $Game_of_football a goal will be scored” would not be classified as gambling. However, a long time period between action and reward does minimise the risk of habit-forming feedback that short term bets can create.
Problematic gambling comes from a tightly closed action->reward loop driving harmful behaviour.
A ‘gambling block’ that blocks less habit-forming betting along with potentially dangerous betting is an ‘acceptable casualty’ in the practical reality that vetting every attempted betting transaction is not viable (e.g. sites that offer both ‘OK’ and ‘not OK’ bets being operated by an account that can be topped up, and thus with no visibility from Monzo’s end). I would posit that the gambling block should also block sites dedicated to short-term investment and investment-like behaviour (e.g. CFD trading, ‘spread betting’ etc) and block share trading services that allow for short term holding of positions (i.e. do not enforce some relatively long minimum term between buying and selling shares). That would have the side-effect of blocking services like Freetrade (though they could implement their own holding-time requirement to alleviate this for customers who need it), but better meet the needs of breaking the feedback loop that drives harmful behaviour.
Dictionary.com: Gambling - “to stake or risk money, or anything of value, on the outcome of something involving chance”.
This sounds very much like investing in any company. The risk here I would argue is still quite significant, albeit less than investing in a day one start up. If you have money to invest, do it. If you will miss the money or regret it, don’t!
Investing, speculating, gambling, they are all the same activity with different names. There will always be risk involved, if there wasn’t, the reward would not be as potentially high. You could always put your money in an easy access 1.5% interest account…
