Well, sort of, at least for the majority of ordinary and wannabe traders. It is relatively easy to earn money on a rising market but it becomes a completely different matter when a sideways market sets in like it is now in the cryptoverse. There are two major factors that turn trading into gambling for most players in this type of market which are presented below.
First, in any financial or speculative market, where Bitcoin rightfully belongs to, you can earn only if you take money from someone else. It could appear as if everyone earns with the rising price but things reveal their true nature when the price stops rising. It is kind of obvious but accepting this is necessary to understand why you can be the one losing the game in the end.
Second, some market participants have an unrestricted edge over the rest of the pack which means that under no circumstances they will be losing. These are arbitrageurs, insiders, exchanges and their likes. For example, it is impossible to beat exchange since it is 100% sure money for them when they can front run your orders and do a lot of other nasty things which you can't.
Given these two circumstances, it is easy to see that if you do not belong to the group of market participants mentioned above, trading pretty quickly turns into gambling for you. So your only chance to win is pure luck. But luck is not a friend of consistency, therefore the only consistency you can reliably expect is losing to someone who has an undisputed edge over you and the market.
Feel free to comment and post your thoughts and ideas here.
Your analysis is quite spot on but at least you have lesser chance to lose money when trading. You can lose all your money instantly when you are gambling. On the other hand, you will only lose all of your investment on trading if you failed to get out on time or when exchanges close. Most of the times, you would only lose a percent of it but not all. Still, it doesn't change the fact that you take money from someone else when you profit from a trade.
