The best way to avoid risk is to do some research and see how bitcoin was behaving for the past couple of years. In general, investment is a ways risky, may be you should try to diversify your risk portfolio by investing into something, which will lower your risk onto cryptocurrency.
Yep, you're right with investing into something smaller. But in this way you must to study the market too. So it's better first of all him knowledge about the risk only then you can invest.