The assets that are being traded represent some other economic activity.
For equities trading, for example the shares actually are a piece of a revenue earning company. The trading activity benefits society by allowing the company to sell additional shares to the public when needed, to raise further capital, for example.
For futures the contracts represent a guarantee to buy or sell a commodity at a known amount and price at a set date in the future. The trading activity benefits society by allowing commodity producers to lock in a known price and offload the market risk of their harvest/herd/etc to speculators.
So the HFT participants in these markets are actually helping society in some way by making these markets more liquid and efficient given that the trading actually serves some benefit. For bitcoin/crypto the trading itself is currently the whole point of the endeavor - people are only buying coins because they think they will go up in price, which makes the trading itself pointless.
For equities trading, for example the shares actually are a piece of a revenue earning company. The trading activity benefits society by allowing the company to sell additional shares to the public when needed, to raise further capital, for example.
For futures the contracts represent a guarantee to buy or sell a commodity at a known amount and price at a set date in the future. The trading activity benefits society by allowing commodity producers to lock in a known price and offload the market risk of their harvest/herd/etc to speculators.
So the HFT participants in these markets are actually helping society in some way by making these markets more liquid and efficient given that the trading actually serves some benefit. For bitcoin/crypto the trading itself is currently the whole point of the endeavor - people are only buying coins because they think they will go up in price, which makes the trading itself pointless.