Depends on the coin we are talking about.
I believe that we are only talking about bitcoin in this thread and not about shitcoins.
Not all coins have cycles and need as much time as others to see the profits made, so would it be considered trading or investing still?
Any coin without a circle is very risky to invest in because you don't understand much about such project. I don't call that investing, because you are putting your funds in a blind project that you cannot tell the possible outcome in the next four years. Look at bitcoin that has a circle and people can use history to predict or speculate on the price of bitcoin on what it will get to in the next four years. It shows can you can confide in bitcoin and continue hodli for long.
With some alts, there is only a year or two when you need to rip off your PNL, with newer ones - it's more like a roller coaster of possibilities.
That's not investing because how will you put your money into a project that last for one or two years and say you are investing. You are only trading because an investment should be running for a long period of time to generate profit from time to time, without shutting down the investment because it's flourishing. If you sell your bag of shitcoins and take profit, what next. You buy another shitcoin and before you know it you will run at big loss because nobody knows which shitcoin can be profitable in the short run, and majority of them bring losses to people who buy them foolishly thinking that they are investing.
Bitcoin is an investment because it has the high odd of price moving uptrend than downtrend and it is a long-term investment for the future. Personally, I feel the future is more important than the present when investing in bitcoin.