The argument goes both ways - a lot of people investing on the stock market are also gamblers betting that their investments will go to the moon. The only difference is that a lot of non-performing companies get culled before they IPO or shortly after. And after a company lists, the market tends to (although not always) re-value it accordingly.

So, of course they'll be gamblers in crypto and every new field - what matters is for there to be a critical mass of builders making things that can be used on a day-to-day basis vs. those trying to hitch a ride on the bandwagon.

Because when a smart guy like the OP does it, it's not a gamble, it's investing.

I never said that. Theoretically, every investment is a gamble in a sense. After all, we've seen high-flying companies crash and burn overnight. FTX is not the first, nor will it be the last. Even high-fliers like Apple were quite close to collapsing sometime in the past, yet people still poured money into them.

The only difference is that they focused on shipping products people actually wanted to buy.

All I'm saying is that the gambling should be backed up by a significant amount of work aimed at usability, call it a high signal-to-noise ratio, if you will.