"Rent-seeking is the effort to increase one's share of existing wealth without creating new wealth."

The accusation here, right or wrong, is that this is what crypto and the bot are ultimately doing.

Note, this may have you reaching for questions that start with "How is this any different from..."

The claim of pure rent-seeking is easily disproven by comparing bid-offer spreads before and after the advent of computerized market making and seeing how much bid-offer transaction costs have shrunk for the average investor.

I don't know that it is, IMO.