> nothing has shown to me that crypto is anything more than a speculative gamble

Sounds like index futures. I understand wanting to buy fresh corn in one year at a constant price, so you get corn contracts for december 2016 and it gets delivered at that price when the contract expires. You know the cost beforehand and you plan for it.

Index futures? They just dump the equivalent dollar amount to your account when it expires. Who benefited? What happened? No physical commodity got exchanged. You've played with numbers, paid commissions, probably some spread and had around 6x leverage. Pretty much checks every box for gambling.