“Capital market players who value investment instruments as gambling opportunities is somewhat unsettling, because without analysis and risk mitigation, investment does become a gamble,” said Isya Yusrilyahya, director of PT Sinergi Selaras Kapital, a Jakarta-based investment advisory firm.

Putting money into new investment instruments like cryptocurrency and nonfungible tokens (NFTs), admits Ajay (not his real name), is somewhat closer to gambling than investing due to the extreme volatility.

“I exclusively [trade] coins of a high-risk, high-return nature,” Ajay said, using a derogatory term for coins that often fluctuate wildly for no apparent reason and represent projects that lack real development.

“Actually, I just ride the wave when it comes to crypto, I don’t do due diligence,” Ajay told The Jakarta Post on Friday.

The 25-year-old civil servant said he was now no longer trading crypto but might get back into the market closer to the next so-called bitcoin halving, a major cyclical event in the dominant cryptocurrency where new supply is slashed, which historically has lifted the entire crypto market.

Ajay says he approaches other investment instruments, such as mutual funds, with greater prudence, going through some analysis and risk assessment before plunging in.

“[Investment and gambling] are different. Investment is when we put our money in real assets, whereas gambling is when we wager our money on something that is not ours,” said Ajay.

Nurilhuda Ardli Santoso, a project assistant at PT Global Ecocentric Konsultan, a Bekasi-based environment consultancy firm, begged to differ.

“Essentially, investing and gambling are one and the same, because both are within the vicinity of probability. The only difference lies in risk mitigation,” said Santoso on Friday.

As a case in point, he noted that, in the stock market, an investor might mitigate risk by analyzing the investment object’s characteristics and performance. However, the same was true in horse racing, where bettors could analyze the horses and jockeys.

“When you pick the [horse] with the highest probability to win, for me, that’s investing,” said Santoso.

Isya said anything could be a gamble without a meticulous process of risk mitigation, analysis and strategy, because real investing was not just throwing the dice but required judgment and calculation.

“Investing is more complex [than gambling], it doesn’t stop at the probability of gaining and losing, because we can employ strategy,” said Isya, adding that, “before investing, we can analyze that investment [object] and when it’s ongoing, we can diversify.”

He went on to say that the rise of online investing platforms was a good thing for financial literacy in Indonesia and expressed his confidence that the ecosystem and players would become more mature as time went by.

“Stock, crypto or NFT exchanges are not a casino where we just give our feelings a go. […] It’s a process for all of us to enrich ourselves with the right and proper financial literacy and knowledge,” said Isya on Thursday.

Magnus, a 27-year-old data scientist who asked to use a pseudonym, said he had no funds to invest currently but did gamble in many ways, through sports betting, poker, blackjack and online slot gambling, though he admitted he did not enjoy the latter.

“I mostly bet on sports like football, basketball or tennis. I do that primarily for extra fun on top of watching the matches themselves. However, there were times when I gambled as a desperate measure to get instant cash,” said Magnus on Friday.

“For me, the one distinguishing aspect between investing and gambling is the [potential rate of return]. In gambling, the accumulation of money can be extreme, [with] high multifold [gains] within a single game,” he explained, adding that gains in investment were slower but could grow exponentially over time.

Investing in deposits, gold, stocks and foreign exchange, senior tax associate at PWC Indonesia, Hana Purnomo, said that even if gambling was legal in Indonesia, she would still choose investing, as gambling had a greater risk of loss, and she would not surrender her money to pure chance.

However, she agreed that there was just a slight difference between investing and gambling, especially when due diligence was not implemented before investing anything.

“When we don’t understand what we are doing, […] especially when you are buying stocks merely because of a fear of missing out, [investing] is the same as gambling, because we don’t know whether the stock is performing well. That’s the same thing as just going out there and trying our luck,” said Hana on Friday.