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My take on cryptocurrency has become: it’s also all gambling, and for that reason I no longer think there is any chance of it going to zero. Absent regulation there is a simply massive market for gambling. It’s shameless exploitation but people will do it (on both ends).

Most of this stuff is actually worse than casinos. Casinos have a social component, employ people, and are often at least a little regulated so that the odds can’t be absolutely 100% toward the house. Also you win actual money not a virtual game item.

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>My take on cryptocurrency has become: it’s also all gambling

I have the same feeling towards the stock market. Sure, it can be well researched information on the stock in question, but it's all a bet your interpretation of that stock is right.

In other investments, you can pick an asset allocation, buy index funds of each asset, dollar cost over time, rebalance, invest over a long time.

Maybe some of that is available now with crypto? Index funds? But with how heavily the bigger cryptocurrencies are price-correlated, I don't think you get good intra-asset diversification benefits.

Personally within my asset allocation, crypto is a tiny fraction of a percent.

If you are doing much other than value investing long term you are gambling.

The stock market can be gambling, but if you put money in an index fund and don't look at it for 30 years, that's psychologically and financially very different from gambling.

The difference is that the expectation value is positive.

Which one are saying then that the expectation is not positive?

Long term, Casinos absolutely have odds slanted toward the house. With the exception of a very few games, like blackjack, which can be effectively gamed, a gambler will statistically be guaranteed to go broke as the number of games approaches infinity.

That’s true of pit and slots games, but there are people who make a living playing poker in casinos. (It’s a player-vs-player hosted game with the casino taking a rake or seat charge rather than a player-vs-house game.)

Some difference in the mechanics, but the overall concept is the same. An individual player might be able to win money in poker (with some combination of luck and skill), but a group of players will always lose to the house.

Poker isn't played as a group. The "overall concept" is whether an individual player can profit over the long run, and in poker but not (say) roulette, the answer is yes.

Your approach reminded me of a joke:

Three statisticians go deer hunting with bows and arrows. They spot a big buck and take aim. One shoots and his arrow flies off three meters to the right. The second shoots and his arrow flies off three meters to the left. The third statistician jumps up and down, yelling "We got him! We got him!"

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