Young men are making risky bets on crypto and politics—and raking it in right now

His six-figure cryptocurrency portfolio jumped more than 30% since Election Day. The gold he owns has increased 28% this year. The investment accounts where he trades stocks and bet on the presidential election were up around 6% in November alone.

Young men hold a disproportionate share of the kinds of risky and volatile investments that financial professionals tend to warn against. Right now, they are hitting pay dirt.

A hypothetical portfolio holding equal amounts of bitcoin, gold, the meme stock GameStop and the sports-betting stock DraftKings returned 62% in the first 11 months of this year. That is more than triple the returns of a traditional portfolio of 60% stocks and 40% bonds, according to an analysis by the financial firm Leuthold Group.

Some of these investors say they are laying a foundation, however risky, to attain traditional goals, such as saving for retirement or a home, survey data from financial education company Noyack shows. Speculative investing doubles as a form of entertainment, thanks to smartphone trading and online forums of bootstrap investors. Users flaunt big wins, teasing financial prosperity that otherwise seems unreachable, especially for the growing number of young men who believe they face economic barriers.

“I feel like I’ve finally made the right decision in life," says Hayes, 34, who works as a software developer for a cybersecurity company.

Men’s gender attitudes are a predictor of whether they own cryptocurrency and meme stocks, Fairleigh Dickinson University professor Dan Cassino found. Young men who said they value masculinity highly but feel they aren’t traditionally masculine enough have the highest levels of ownership.

Some 42% of men ages 18 to 29 invested in or used crypto, versus 17% of women of that age, the Pew Research Center said in October. Almost 11% of men ages 25 to 34 own both gold and silver, compared with 6.5% of the U.S. population, financial education company Gold IRA Guide found. By contrast, men make up only a slight majority of all investors, according to financial technology company Broadridge.

The price of bitcoin passed $100,000 for the first time this week, partly on hopes that the Trump administration will be more friendly to crypto. President-elect Donald Trump appealed directly to crypto investors during the 2024 presidential election.

Politics also became its own speculative investment. Traders staked $166 million on who would win the election through startup Kalshi, which won a court ruling in October allowing political trading in the U.S. About 85% of Kalshi users are male, and nearly half are under 30, the company said.

Risk for retirement

Hayes says his main investing goal is to retire comfortably. When he first bought crypto at 21, he experimented with trendy meme coins and lost at least five figures. But crypto’s boom in 2017 helped him buy his first house. He believes traditional stock investing via his 401(k) and Roth IRA won’t gain fast enough to offset the cost of living.

“I don’t see myself retiring without taking a larger risk," Hayes said. “The way that this financial system is for our generation, I feel like you have to take that leap of faith."

Some men say they have little choice but to roll the dice in a world they believe is stacked against them. Their participation in the labor force is falling while it grows for women their age. Young men are less likely to enroll in college.

Men outearn women in the workplace and are more likely to reach executive-level positions. But some 45% of young men said in 2023 they face gender discrimination, up from less than a third in 2019, according to the Survey Center on American Life, part of the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute.

That sense of alienation feeds into a common refrain on online forums, says Cassino of Fairleigh Dickinson: “The only way you can actually be successful is by going outside the system."

The pandemic economy of 2020 and 2021 was a breeding ground for people who share this view. Stimulus checks and reduced spending put money in people’s bank accounts. Commission-free brokerages such as Robinhood grew in popularity. Markets plunged, then soared, rewarding people who bought when others shied away.

As more people jumped into retail investing, the average investor skewed younger, more male and less wealthy over the past five years, according to data from Broadridge.

Men and younger investors are more likely to buy market dips or chase big gains in the market like the current one, JPMorganChase Institute found in October.

Investing influencers

Alex Monahan, 28, bought crypto and started betting on sports around the same time in 2019, taking the advice of his co-workers at the financial firm Susquehanna International Group. He was already “gambling other people’s money" at work, he reasoned.

He now feels as though he didn’t educate himself enough. The 2022 collapse of crypto exchange FTX erased about $400,000 from his portfolio. Although he has gotten roughly half of that back so far, he hasn’t bought crypto since. He continues sports betting and now creates videos about it full-time.

“I think there’s a lot of bad advice out there," Monahan said. “There’s so much content online about sports betting and gambling and crypto, and some things I’m very wary of. Other things it’s like, yeah, you can make money doing this."

Many start using online platforms including YouTube, Reddit and Discord to talk about videogames, then get exposure to investing advice, says Daniel Kaufmann, director of gaming services and program development at Kindbridge Behavioral Health. Users on YouTube and Reddit skew male and under age 30, according to Pew Research Center. They have become a market force, helping fuel the run-up of GameStop’s stock in 2021.

“The same kids who are in Discord servers for videogames are gambling on crypto tokens," said Scott Melker, who invests in crypto and posts about it on YouTube.

Sports betting is now legal in almost 40 states. U.S. gamblers using offshore betting platforms such as Polymarket and Bovada often make their wagers using crypto to avoid fees.

About 10% of men ages 18 to 29 have struggled with problem gambling, compared with 2.5% of the total U.S. population, according to Cassino’s research.

Jahred Jones, 33, says that what he considers his “little gambling addiction" is enough to cover his retirement or possibly a down payment on a house. He turned his $2,000 pandemic stimulus check into about $80,000 by investing it in crypto.

His YouTube videos warn against investing based on big market moves, but he says that is a hard sell to people subsisting paycheck to paycheck.

He first bought crypto during bitcoin’s major run-up in 2017. Learning about it online, he says he didn’t focus enough on risks, and the price fell about 75% that year.

“The hype times like right now are probably the worst because people are only showing that they’re making $100,000," Jones says. “They’re not showing the loss."

Write to Katherine Hamilton at katherine.hamilton@wsj.com