Investing and gambling can be done at the same time. The problem with some people is that they treat both as investing when in reality they don't have the skills to be profitable in gambling. Well, investing in bitcoin isn't that easy also, because if you don't have the patience and discipline, you'll also end up losing, you know, there's a bear marekt that would result to bitcoin dumping so hard, so if someone panic, he might have sold it at a loss.
What I'm trying to emphasize is that nothing is certain when it comes to investing, that's why there's a risk on investing because it doesn't guarantee a profit. While gambling would only make our life worse if we don't know how to handle it, I mean, losing $18k and end up $18k in debt, that's too much stupidity in their, and that is clearly the result of gambling addiction, so he needs to man up, face the problem and solve it, and make sure to learn from that mistake, even the hard way.
You’ve said it all mate, Gambling and investing both involve uncertainty around gains and losses, so the line between them is thin. Many investors gamble and many gamblers invest (think a good poker player). In my opinion the main difference is around 1. how well is the risk managed? 2. what is expected return? Compared to gambling, Investing generally has more rigorous management of risk and diversification, and has a positive expected return. So the person betting 10% of his bankroll on each toss of the dice at the craps table is gambling. The person who's on the other side of that bet and 1000 other uncorrelated/diversified bets, the casino owner, is investing.
Cryptocurrencies, especially Bitcoins, are widely considered to be the most promising innovation that this generation has been trying to perfect or perfect in this economical frenzy of freedom. They are literally everybody’s last resort when it comes to serving everybody’s vested interests related to the widely believed nature of government bodies and their scrupulous urge to understand everything which they don’t even have to. Just like every other businesses and investment, it a risky one, gambling is not any thing related, the only thing is they both yield profit and looses too as the case maybe.