It's not an extreme risk if you only invest a small amount of money. I wouldn't suggest anyone remortgage their house to put that into bitcoin, but I've invested ~$1200 in there and I'm willing to wait and see what happens. If I lose it, it will be a learning experience and I'll be just fine.
People bet big when the ETA to payoff is perceived as near and possibly large. A number of elements impede this behavior wrt BTC I wager since it was always pitched as a slow roasting investment, whereas in the case of GME, being a stock and not Bitcoin, we saw this behavior more liberally I think
