I think it's more fun to make money slowly in this game. Other wise it becomes one massive grind to get to the "end-game"
In my case, I have a decent amount of cash, mostly made from bounty hunting, missions and exploration. Maybe 5% of it is from trading / smuggling. And it took me a long time to get there, but it's been a fun ride. Lately we've been playing around with UAs to see how they react to planet surfaces. It's been quite a lot of fun.

