Futures contracts exist as insurance contracts. The fact that people can trade them as gambling items doesn't mean they exist as gambling.

Almost anything can be gambling if you make it gambling. Effectively all the assets in the securities world that can be bought and sold as derivatives exist to facilitate and existing industry by offsetting risk.

There is a world of difference between someone treating corn futures as a roulette wheel, and an entire industry existing whose sole purpose is pure gambling with all of the negative externalities that fall out of that:

>I reported an Iranian missile strike... then gamblers who had wagered millions on a deranged bet threatened to kill me

https://www.dailymail.com/yourmoney/article-15651989/polymar...

Seasonal bets on regional weather are a way for farm and energy businesses to hedge against volatility from unusual weather.

If you're holding Florida grapefruit futures, hedging against an early freeze is an economic trade on the future value of a real thing.

IDK of anything more backing the derivatives than the funds of the bettors, and the guy with the hot-air gun heating up the official thermometer at the Paris airport... [0]

[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/polymarket-paris-weather-bet...