-snip
I think the people who are against this change are either spammers themselves and this could be the biggest portion, or people who are from third world countries.
You may say that you could potentially lose 3-20 dollars while getting there and that may not be a lot of money to you, and usually not a huge amount to other people as well, but to some people that is still a big amount, specially losing 20 bucks, but more importantly and the main reason, you could totally lose a lot more, you are not betting guaranteed, maybe you will bet a bit more riskier and lose a lot more, like 100-200 dollars until you reach 500, and that is like a salary in some nations. This is why I believe there is this situation where people from very very poor countries could have trouble reaching that 500 level.
By wagering 500$, you can potentially loose 500$... All bets that you place can be lost, even the ones with an odd of 1.01.
What I am wondering, are there a lot of people who (in the past) just wagered 100$ to be able to participate in the chat and than stopped playing on the site? Would be interesting to know.
You "may" lose 500 but that requires you to chase the losses very much. Just think about it this way, make it like 1 dollar per bet for 500 bets, and never increase it, never decrease it, by logic you should not lose more than 50 bucks which is 10% loss and that is still a lot, normally 1% is 5 bucks but I am just making sure that I give a lot of money. Now this method would make sure that you spend under 100 bucks yet again, and still reach that 500 bucks.
I feel like it is quite tiny amount to be able to chat, people here are spending tens of thousands of dollars on gambling, in reality use just few hundred at most, the reason for that is that people do not go all in and put all their money on the line with one bet, they spend like 1% of their bankroll and just continue to gamble that way.