Cordially, this is kind of like saying in a discussion about mathematics, "numbers are backed by something real." And hand waving over a whole suite of objects that have no real backing at all.

Options and futures contracts have existed in some form for pretty much the entire history of commerce. The heart of the problem is that people need to be able to take risk for some endeavours, and want to have financial instruments to mitigate that risk.

In blunt terms: if it's ok for the farmer and the baker to agree on a forward futures contract for the price of wheat so they can run their business, then it should be ok for both parties to sell their contracts on the secondary market to get liquidity (e.g. a farmer is fully leveraged in seeds, has the promise to sell wheat for price x at time y, but needs cash now to fix whatever). The bank should then be able to monetize it's exposure and sell calls on the open market. At this point we're not trading on anything "real" anymore than betting whether the harvest season will be good (or bad)

That secondary market is as real as anything on kalshi. So how would you propose to craft laws to mark one as gambling and the other as investing?

Why wouldn't they be regulated any differently?