We’ve officially entered the age of hyperspeculation.
Somewhere between the FanDuel push notification and the Pump.fun launch screen, an entire generation quietly decided that merely saving money was a losing strategy.
Whether it is stocks, memecoins, prediction markets, Labubus, or Pokémon cards, the percentage of people diving deeper into the risk curve keeps growing by the day.
📊 The Numbers
➡️ Americans legally wagered $166.94 billion on sports bets in 2025 - an all-time record. This was driven by 22% annual growth in online sports betting, with more than 80% of that flow placed from a phone.
➡️ Kalshi and Polymarket combined for $44 billion in prediction market trading volume in 2025. By February 2026, they did $17.9 billion in a single month. Run-rate for 2026 is now above $200 billion.
➡️ Zero-day-to-expiry options now account for 59% of all S&P 500 volume per Cboe's full-year 2025 data. Retail is responsible for half or more of that flow.
➡️ Pump.fun has cleared $800 million in lifetime revenue launching tokens on Solana, fewer than 2% of which ever graduate to a major trading venue.
Mainstream media calls this "financial nihilism." The more interesting question is what is driving it.
🔍 The Driver Is Anxiety, Not Greed
Gen Z and millennials have managed to become the most financially anxious generations in recent history.
Deloitte's 2025 survey of 23,000 respondents across 44 countries found the share of Gen Zs who do not feel financially secure jumped from 30% to 48% in a single year. Millennials moved from 32% to 46%. More than half of each cohort live paycheque to paycheque, and over 80% cite their long-term financial future as a primary source of stress.
The reason is a K-shaped economy. Post-2008 and post-COVID monetary policy inflated asset prices for existing owners and punished aspiring ones. Housing affordability has deteriorated so far that only 26.1% of Gen Z and 54.9% of millennials owned a home in 2024.
Northwestern Mutual's 2026 study found 80% of Gen Zs and 75% of millennials who feel behind believe high-risk speculation will help them hit their goals faster than saving through conventional channels. The WEF reframes this not as recklessness but as institutional-trust collapse. If the legacy system feels rigged, speculative venues look comparatively legitimate.
The housing crisis created a generation of involuntary alternative asset investors.
❓ Where the Flow Is Going
Two markets are absorbing this in ways that matter.
🔴 Collectibles — Walmart's trading card sales rose 200% between February 2024 and June 2025. Pokémon cards up tenfold YoY. Target's trading card sales were on pace to exceed $1 billion in 2025. Pop Mart's Labubu line did $677 million in revenue in H1 2025 alone, up 668% YoY. But not everything is melting up. Secondary watch prices bottomed at a three-year low. StockX reported only 47% of sneaker releases trading above retail. The speculation rotates between categories as narratives live and die.
🔴 Crypto — Perp DEXs cleared $12 trillion in cumulative volume in 2025. Hyperliquid commanded up to 70% market share at peak. The S&P 500 is now tradable as a 24/7 leveraged perpetual on-chain. Kalshi and Polymarket are both reportedly raising at $20 billion valuations, a doubling in three months on both sides. Jump Trading and ICE have taken stakes. Both categories share one thing: they facilitate hyperspeculation.
————————
🔖 Bottom Line: Narratives rotate. The infrastructure enabling the speculation does not. The easiest long-term holds over the next decade may not be the assets people are speculating on but the platforms they are speculating through. Worth keeping in mind when picking positions for the bear market.