Well at the first place its safer and you can also make more money, gambling is really based on luck and you can than also lose everything at once.
As such trading requires more luck than gambling friend because you have to rely on the developer to fulfill the promises he made during the ICO and if you are a btc price trader then you need luck to get the price of bitcoins higher and higher.
But yeah trading is a little better because with time it gives you knowledge but gambling gives just losses with time.
I think we are talking about a specific trading like altcoin to bitcoin here? I do agree this thing is requires on some altcoins because the life of trading in this point depend on the developer activity. Once the developer stops. The trading value of the said altcoin will automatically decline.
But in trading as in general, all you need is knowledge and skills on analyzing events around a certain stocks and also include the altcoin stuff. If a news came that a developer of this popular coins stops supporting this coins, am sure we will be the first to sell and wait for it to hit the bottomaand buy back for the possible community take over.