Haha well they can go up or down really easily. I've never put a penny of "real money" into crypto, just what I've been given as sponsorship or from playing games (not gambling, games that let you earn a little), and dabbled with trading. I think in general if you can get in early on an alt that has a solid reason for existing, a good communicative dev team and active community, and above all are patient, you can get a nice profit. Trying to go for the huge profits is, as you say, pretty much gambling (as is any scheme where you hope to get rich quickly I guess).
I find the whole concept of cryptocurrency interesting though. Just how do we define value / worth? Why is fiat currency viewed as "real" and crpto not (by the population at large)? I'm not convinced that true decentralisation is even possible - you need some way of deciding what new innovations to include in your coin, update the GIThub etc, and that inevitably leads to centralisation of a type. Then of course there are people that take advantage of other's lack of technical savvy for their own advantage, even big exchanges have been prone to attack, 51% attacks have happened, scams, exploits, ponzi schemes... it's quite a minefield to negotiate!
[EDIT] Although actually... after some thought, I don't feel BTC will necessarily become the first crypto to have major adoption. Although initially this seemed like a no-brainer, these days confirmation times are long enough that an alt with a big market cap and following might just do it first - ETH seems the obvious contender although some that work alongside the BTC network (as I believe Guilden does) may be able to - usable anywhere BTC is accepted but with much faster confirmations (presumably... haven't really looked into that side of things much). I've always been impressed with Blackcoin too, I think that could be adopted relatively large-scale at some point.