gambling can never be less risky than anything else in my opinion. but i agree, since i have also seen many people who have been very successful in different types of skill based gambling games.

but i can never convince myself to go for it. because i say if i wanted to spend time to learn the skills required to be good at those games, i would spend that time instead on a proper skill that can give me a risk-free profit. and there are lots of jobs that i can learn and make profit.
and doing that i just use gambling as a game and for entertainment.

as far as a pump is concerned you are right, the development and stability or even good code and good features doesn't matter at all. we are clearly seeing this coins like ethereum that are being pumped.

but as far as a solid coin is concerned all the above matter. it is because of the active developing team that litecoin is still alive. it is also having a very stable price in the range of $3 - $4 and that has to count for something.

but all that aside, you have forgotten than Chinese are pumping litecoin and they have been out of the game for some time. with their exchanges starting up again we may expect a nice rise.

ICO should not even be called an investment, it should be called a gamble because it is a gamble.
you see a thread and some unknown anonymous person on the internet who is saying "my coin is awesome" and the code is not ready yet, it just lists some specification which you have seem a thousand times before and i bet not a single person checks the code!

that is why i say it is a gamble. people put their money down and bet if the projects gets enough victims to pump up or fail and they lose.

let me help you out a little here:
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/decrease
https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/english-grammar/verbs/present-tense
www.basic-mathematics.com/

bitcoin price: https://bitcoinwisdom.com/markets/bitfinex/btcusd

when price goes from $900 to $974 in less than 24 hours it means price is increasing not decreasing. i don't know from where you are taking the price but it is giving you wrong information. go to bitcoinwisdom and click on any interval below 1 hour and see the rise.
that is for short term.

if you are looking at a longer period such as past couple of days, then zoom out more and see the past months instead and come back here to continue discusson about price and whether it is decreasing or increasing.

and if you have any other question, first clarify which time-frame you have in mind then ask your question with more details.

EDIT:
here is another help if you are lazy

this topic is in trading discussion board so i am going to say no it is not possible because in order to trade you need some base money to work with and it needs to be at least half of the profit you want to make. and in order to make profit you need to have had some experience in this job. you can't just start trading and expect profit.
also on top of all that, as a trading beginner you need to start slow and take less risks by making less profit and that makes making $100 harder for you. trading needs persistence at first to learn first then expect return.

you have missed a couple of important things though:
* No ICO
* No Pre mine
* the developers team seem good enough and determined
* some privacy features, that i didn't go into details of but they seem good.

the only problem is that right now seems to be a bit late for entry since price has gone up with speed of light! that always makes investment hard.
also i argue that the supply is a bit high.

i have been making sports bets mostly on football matches because i know football more than other sports and i believe that in sports betting knowing the game and the teams yourself is half the battle.
but i have also tried basketball bets mostly using tipsters and it was good although i never liked it since i am not a big fan of basketball.

as far as other games go, i have tried betting on boxing matches and horse racing but i was terrible at both of them so i quit because not quitting meant losing money.

i don't know about him but there is a very good topic about investing in gambling site's bankroll here in this board which you can take a look at: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1585408.0

it has been going on for a very long time (31 weeks if i am not mistaken) and you can see the records that starter of that topic is making. it is very interesting to follow and see how each of them are performing.

hope it helps you too the same way it helped me.

sometimes i read comments that i can't even understand where you even got the idea of saying those things!

so are you trying to say that since the price of these coins rise fast that makes them good. that logic is broken my friend.
and besides if you take a quick look at the history of these coins and other 1000 coins like them you can see the same patterns repeat over and over again.

again, you are expecting an ever-rising-market and let me break your illusion and tell you that this kind of market doesn't exist anywhere in the world.
price goes up with more adoption and when it is fast there is a correction. and in small bitcoin market there are manipulations that causes a bigger correction.

what problem?
the only problems that bitcoin has are FUD, weak hands, and spam attack which can not go on forever and the only result of it is a little bit higher fees.
the rest of the things you "hear" are bullshit and political to take the power and none of them will ever happen.

you are using words without meaning
how is Ethereum reliable?
it is centralized
and it has bugs and exploitable features.

you said good ideas. ok, which one of them you are even aware of? which one of them have you even used?
i have lots of good ideas too, but unless they become reality and put to use, they remain just that, "ideas".

price being high, in other words going high so fast is not tempting it is a big ass warning. a warning to stay away because there is a bubble forming. and it doesn't matter what market it is. Dash, ETH, BTC, Gold, Silver,...
fast rise means you lost your chances to get in, now stay alert because a dump is coming when bubble bursts. of course you can always still get in but the risks are much higher and you will most probably lose lots of money.

why are you even arguing about altcoin dumps? that is an entirely different story with a completely different reason than the dumps that happen in bitcoin. and reading the topic and opening post i see it is all about bitcoin not altcoins.

any bitcoin dump is simply a manipulation unless there is a valid reason for quitting bitcoin and that reason has not yet happened.
any altcoin dump has that valid reason. traders are quitting that altcoin to take their money out and put it in another thing to make more of it and then another and so on.

back to the topic, i agree with OP that these dumps in bitcoin are important and can potentially be a good thing that we can all use as regular users that are not whales. when they dump their stash becomes open to public, so far public panics most of the time and they buy back more because price goes down and they become bigger whales but as the buy support grows their power diminishes.

the funny thing is that i have never gambled before in my entire life before finding out about bitcoin!
after knowing what bitcoin is and after i started using it, i saw the advertisements of gambling sites on bitcointalk mostly the signatures and wanted to try it.
long story short i started with gambling dice and continued doing so until today. in the middle of all that i have done some other gamblings such as poker and sports betting and some other weird games but i always come back to dice.

Bitcoin:
is decentralized, it has a lot of adoption, it has a lot of users, a lot of usage, a lot of real world applications and a lot of services that you can pay for with bitcoin. the distribution is the best, there has never been any premine or any bullshit to get the coins, you could get them from day 1 if you wanted and there is still no restriction, you can buy or if you are willing you can invest and mine it.
the market is the biggest and that means speculation on it is a lot easier than any smaller markets.
there is real adoption where new people come and buy bitcoin because they either want an excellent investment or they want to use this cryptocurrency online as it is intended to (a peer to peer decentralized digital cash).
and a lot more.

Dash:
it has a decent amount of supply and that can help its inflation and finally the price. it is a pump coin and that is a good thing for making a big and quick profit.
it has a big premine. and many even call it a scam. it doesn't have a positive public face. there really isn't any real world usage for it.
in the anonymity department it is not really anonymous. and compared to other coins it has nothing to say compared to coins like Monero.
there is no adoption, only traders switching their money over to Dash and out of it after they are done.
it is a pump coin and that is bad because it kills the coin in the long term when it is pump and dumped.

ETH:
it had a good idea at first but it is implemented pretty badly.
the code is bad and has many bugs, many of which has already been found. some of them even exploited and one of them led to a hard fork and splitting of ETH/ETC and there will always be a possibility of the same exploits and other unknown bugs that can be devastating to anybody who has his money in this coin.
it has a big premine (in form of ICO).
there is no real world usage for it and the smart contract that they are so proud of is not really something special on this platform.
the supply is HUGE. it has one of the biggest number of coins available and with a simple supply and demand rule the price will always be under constant sell pressure.
there has not been a clear cap on the maximum number of coins available.
the last and the worst but not the least is the centralization. this coin is one of the coins that is completely centralized and everything from the price to the code and the future is being decided by those who control it and can easily be manipulated to their advantage.
it is a pump coin so that is a good point of this coin and that makes it a good investment as long as there is a big pump going on and we can get in early on.

no matter what you do, gambling will always be gambling and the risk of it is going to be always unpredictable and what you put down vanishes if you lose and you get profit if you win.

but in trading there is no money vanishing. you can sell at lower price to prevent losing everything and good traders already doing it, they sell at a small loss and prevent their money being lost all. and in the end you buy back at the bottom to make that small loss back and then some more profit.

besides if you think market is risky then you can stay away until it is no longer risky and then get back in. or if you are skilled enough you can even make money from that risky market and turn the table around.

some day in the future you will realize that today and yesterday were good time to invest not tomorrow.
when tomorrow comes, it is already too late to invest. and you will end up either not being able to even afford to invest or you end up paying a much more amount to do the same investment.

it is like Apple and those who didn't know or was too stupid to buy its shares. now look at where Apple company is at.

with bitcoin you should realize that there is only 21 million coins and a lot of others have already bought a lot of it and will sell it to you at very high prices of $10,000 in a couple of years.

thanks for the warning and it is good for people to know these things before having their funds taken hostage by an exchange service!

i moved on from poloniex for this exact reason. when they started talking about verification and change some stuff with their service a couple of years ago, i knew very well what i should do.

i went to bittrex instead and i am very happy with their service although there is a verification there too, but it doesn't seem to be blocking me so far.

the same thing happens that happened last time Ethereum hard forked.
in case you missed it this is what happened:
1. DAO exploited the ethereum platform and Vitalik and his team lost a bunch of money
2. they decided to get their money back so they forked without reaching consensus through the whole network.
3. because there were no consensus, obviously a large group didn't accept it and they decided to continue on mining the original chain and called it ethereum classic.
4. people who had any ETH before the fork now had 2 sets of coins one on ETH and one on ETC and could sell on both chains.
5. ethereum foundation started a series of dumps over a period of time (many of which was caught and blocked by poloniex) to crash price of ETC

well it is not just about gambling, but about any kind of online payment that you can think of. for example when you want to buy anything online with your credit card you need to first register, then verify your identity possibly by giving that site your IDs and copy of your very personal information and wait for someone to accept them and then allow you to make the purchase and not to mention all the hacks and stolen credit cards that happen because of this!

with bitcoin you go to the shop and pay. end of story. no need to take risks of getting hacked and no need to give your personal information and destroy your anonymity.

i believe the "scared period" is over now. and price is becoming stable while day traders are talking full advantage of this volatile situation to make their daily profit with the rise and falls in a big range going up and down!
HODL is the easy and safest choice in situations like this when everything is crazy and unclear though.

something i don't see anyone talking about is your amount of bitcoin!
for example what "Kprawn" does with his paper wallets with "safety deposit box" costs and in some places it costs a considerable amount each month. and you should only do it in case you have a large amount or already own a safety deposit box and put the paper alongside other things in there.

if you have small amounts of bitcoin then i say don't worry too much about it. just print a simple paper and each year you can renew it. printed paper even without lamination can last for many years if not exposed to fire, water,...

because the market makers or i better call them the pumpers have only so much money and so many bots and accounts on poloniex to pump the coins! they don't have a million hands and eyes and they certainly don't have unlimited funds. they can only pump a limited number of coins and right now the two of the biggest coins (dash and eth) are being pumped. after the bubbles of these two coins burst all the money will fly back to bitcoin and to other altcoins.
Ripple can be next. i am also thinking litecoin.