I constantly here people say " Only invest what you can afford to lose" Well no matter where your wealth is it could crash.
-Invest in USD- USA could collapse and experience mass inflation making your dollars nearly worthless
-Invest in Bonds- Government could collapse making your bonds worthless
-Invest in real estate- Housing prices could crash, natural disaster could hit and insurance company could go bankrupt
-Invest in metals- prices could crash, asteroid mining could collapse prices
Your money is never 100% safe no matter where it is invested.
Have you read the 'Friedman's Restatement of Quantity Theory'? In his theory, Friedman considered money as an asset. Like any other capital asset, people invest in money because it gives future benefits(temporary abodement of purchasing power) and returns(opportunity cost). So yes, if money itself is nothing more than a pure capital investment, every other commodity that could be bought with it is considered as capital asset provided that the commodity doesn't provide any utility because if it provides utility it no longer remains capital asset but turn to be consumer asset.
Now coming to whether every investment is risky. In short yes, your instinct is right. The definition of investment itself states that investment is taking risk to have return on value invested. But that doesn't mean whatever you purchase gonna put your money in risk. Here government comes into picture. In other words I am talking about 'Risk-free return'. Governments in every country issue Treasury Bills which have ROI as similar to Fixed Deposits or little more. Else, if you wanna make big, you should be ready to take risk, there's no point to argue that.