Futures trading may only turn gambling if you actually trade without knowledge and experience. That way, regardless if it's spot or futures, everything will definitely end up with gambling. And once you trade with high leverage, without being good experiences in futures trading, you will only end up trading like gambling.
Hence, I don't suggest for everyone here who is starting to trade to engage in futures trading as it's highly risky and has a high danger of losing if you trade without sufficient skills and strategies.
With experience or without it, futures is gambling because there is liquidation and with that included, you risk losing everything. The way you don't have control over gambling result is the same way you don't have control over liquidation but you can manage it by either making more deposit or trading with cross margin so that you can have options to make more deposit incase you of liquidation but as a trader, do you intend to make more deposit into a cross margin when you want to make more money?
Trading on spot is like risking all you have in anticipation for growth but futures is something like you are betting with another trader that the price will come up or down while the other person is predicting that the price will come down or up. You guys are counter trading eachother and is who ever is correct among you too will be having a green PNL. I wouldn't advice any trader to do futures.
For professional traders, futures trading is a big opportunity to gain instant wealth but for beginners, it requires specific knowledge and skills first, hence beginners when they tend to do futures trade, they mostly end up gambling knowing they have less or no experiences in futures trading.
Trading with high leverage will add more risks but the rewards are also worth the trades that’s why a lot of traders suicide to do futures trading but still end up losing because they lack the skills and experiences to succeed.
The higher you risk, the high chance of you getting liquidated quickly. When I see traders doing 15x and 25x, I see it as a greed and nothing more. It's will give you a profit of 15-25x quickly because of traders with less capital but any sharp decline will take that small capital from you before you even blink an eye, even I'm to trade sophisticated trades other than spot, it's will be margin with 3x maximum, it wouldn't exceed that range.