I really like the posts Fella has made on this thread. I've a few random thoughts that are perhaps relevant to this thread.
I think people often divide things into risky and non-risky. Bitcoin is risky, prize bonds are non-risky - therefore prize bonds are better. This might surprise some but I used to be hugely risk averse, to the extent that I never wanted to take on any debt, even a mortgage if I could avoid it, and I hesitated to invest in anything other than saving fiat and term deposits. Part of this was avoiding things I didn't fully understand and part of it was not wanting to risk my hard earned money.
I eventually realised there is nothing that is non-risky, it's a scale not an absolute, there is just varying degrees of risk. I apply this to a wide range of things in life not just investing, and I consider investing as just a low risk type of gambling. Is it better to sit down at the poker table with 1000 or invest it in a stock? It depends on your risk tolerance, whether you can afford to lose it or not, what percentage of your worth 1000 represents, how good you are at poker compared to the people you'll play against, how much you know about the stock etc... Every case has to be evaluated.
On the boards.ie investing forum a single Bitcoin related thread sat side by side with a prize bond related one on the investment forum for years. People with up to tens of thousands in prize bonds each week posting the odd 50 quid win, many of whom seemed to have no other investments. They see it as no risk I guess, but they risk their euros devaluing in real terms, they have a negligible counter-party risk of the state failing and not paying them back (but why not mention it anyway), and they have the risk of opportunity-cost due to not having exposure to higher risk investments that offer higher returns.
Now, you can say that last one isn't a risk at all, it's just opportunity cost, but personally these days I consider both in equal measure. A guy with 50 in prizebonds in 2013 could have taken 200 of that and put it in bitcoin. As it has turned out his worst case was having 49800 + pb winnings if bitcoin went to zero, or 78k+ as it has turned out. This is just an example, I'm not saying it was obvious or knowable that bitcoin would increase, that's not my point here at all, more-so that not taking risks IS the risk that you miss out on potential gains.
Following on from that thought, people today are being forced into more risk than ever, and not just in terms of investments. There is much less job stability (less jobs for life), there is more risk with taking on a mortgage as you may be unemployed or have to move for another job. Before you even get to that, Americans now are facing the risk of even going to university, they may leave with huge debt and no guarantee of a job afterwards that will have made it worth it. Due to the computer revolution society is changing faster than ever in human history.
I see a bit of a change in attitude among the millennials, they know they can try to do everything in the old fashioned non-risk way, get a high level of education, save for a deposit, buy a house, invest in standard mutual funds for a pension etc, but it can go wrong at every turn. A crazy rental market can prevent them ever getting that deposit, the mortgage may in reality be an anchor more than a home, the pension may be raided by the government if there's a large scale economic crash again. More of them are going their own way, the internet is letting people take other paths which don't seem as risky as before. Drive an uber, do air b&b, day trade bitcoin, play video games for a living on twitch, be a content creator on youtube. You can try things, start small see what works and find your own way, find where you have an edge.
When there is no real safe option, people will be more inclined to take risks, and it's not necessarily a bad thing in moderation.
EDIT: I think you can even see this with Brendan - he does not want to risk missing out on bitcoin falling to zero.