Investing is when the instrument has measurable properties and explanations for why it will become more valuable - i.e. you invest in making your factory larger, so it can produce product more cheaply.
Betting on completely unregulated currency markets (which have good reasons that they shouldn't have any value at all) is gambling, because you're entirely depending on irrationality. That said...quite a few businesses with that model.
The way I like to think of it is, it's gambling when your expected rate of return is negative or zero. It's investing when it is positive.
This is why a gambler is gambling, but a casino is investing/running a business.
Betting all your money on one hand of blackjack is a gamble, even if you've been counting cards and know the odds are in your favor. A casino spreading its money over millions of small bets is investing.
There are people who make a living from this, just like there are people making a living from investments. Likewise, there are lots of people that lose at both.
It seems pretty clear to me that gambling and investing are a continuum, with craps at one end and Treasury bonds at the other.
It turns out people can make huge returns even from investing in known scams - certainly not guaranteed, but it's better odds than gambling.
They have the exact same mechanics, structure, and backing as Bitcoin...
Investing == gambling. You can buy shares. Or you can make a bet with a spread-betting financial company that pays out in the same way that the shares do. We call one investing and other gambling, but there is no difference.
This is not the case in gambling or commodities markets; for me to win, someone else has to lose.
1. From The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham: "An investment operation is one which, upon thorough analysis, promises safety of principal and an adequate return. Operations not meeting these requirements are speculative."
http://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Investor-Definitive-Invest...
2. From Mr. Buffett on the Stock Market: "The definition is simple but often forgotten: investing is laying out money now to get more money back in the future -- more money in real terms, after taking inflation into account."
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1999/...
