Sinking your whole life savings into something is stupid and it's peoples own fault if they do so and lose everything.

Sunk half my life savings in at $16, then doubled down and sunk the rest in when it dropped to $3.

Have now bought a house each for pretty much all my close friends and family members.

Couldn't a gambler say exactly the same thing?

With gambling the winners is very, very small minority. With bitcoin/crypto practically all people who got in before 2017 have been doing very, very well.

Usually, no.

With any financial instruments there are those for who it is a worse deal than alternative. With Bitcoin you have great volatility, but it has been mostly upwards. If you have made loss you are probably minority of the user/investor base.

For example, the current ATH was nearly $20k, and the current price is $9k. If you were unlucky enough to buy at ATH, you are down to 40%. Thats still not that bad situation - for example with stocks it is easy to find bets where you lose 90%.