As long as the investing is kept in a logical manner and done diligently, it is not gambling. Crypto can be compared to what stocks is and we have some people who tend to call stocks trading as a type of gambling.
Investment decisions should be made after due diligent research and very careful in-depth consideration about your own capital management, your financial plan in near and long future. Without enough research and in-depth consideration, your investment is more similar to gambling. Even you lack the latter part - in-depth consideration, it will still be likely gambling but a bit better than without both parts.
Some gamblers in crypto market simply heard advice of others, read news and jumped directly to the market. They even don't know how crypto market works: its intraday margin of price changes compare to other markets; forced liquidations and how news can result in massacre. They are worse gamblers if they use leverages without comprehensive understandings about those factors as well as are not experienced long enough in the market.
From there any sort of speculative trading ends up getting named as a sort of gambling.
Speculators are gamblers if they make decisions carelessly, without any base for their decisions, and simply do it with greed and risky hopeless hope.