Investing in cryptocurrencies is in itself a high-risk, high-reward endeavour and hence should be approached with enough knowledge and caution although sometimes one can be unfortunate regardless of the amount of knowledge gained due to the upturn of events in the crypto market. In purchasing crypto currency depending on your goals (short-term term or long-term), for short-term that is buying when the market is low and selling when it later rises the risk involved is that the price may not rebound and hence continue to drop or remain stagnant thereby encountering losses while for long-term goal that is buying and holding regardless of the market trend the risk involved is that if the market experiences a prolonged downturn the value of the crypto might decrease significantly. So in all there is risk in cryptocurrency investments whether long-term or short-term.
As a newbie, I understand why you chose the elaborate word "cryptocurrency" rather than simply using Bitcoin. I will guide you a little so you can feel at home in going about the whole thing the right way. This section of the forum is mainly for Bitcoin and how to go about investing and holding it. We prefer retaining that word "Bitcoin" which is what we are discussing and we don't care about the other numerous things that mimics Bitcoin and most often end up as shitcoins(shit in the sense that their value erode with time and often lead to people holding worthless asset).
Every investment has some elements of risk and so does life itself including our daily routine have risk so nothing is completely free from risk. Bitcoin investment have its own risk as well but you can never compare the risk in Bitcoin to the numerous shitcoins. Therefore, concentrate on building a Bitcoin portfolio that you can hold for a long time like 4-10 years and see how happy you will become doing that.
But he really need to differentiate the way how he call things so that there's no confusion will come on his side. If he always call Bitcoin as crypto then provably that he might get confused about other alts out there naming their self the next Bitcoin.
So to avoid having such impression better learn about those basic things also better read back the discussions of this thread since there's lots of things to learn since he's already here.
Bitcoin has its own risk but it doesn't have the same level of risk what those shitcoins could offer since there's huge chance that they would experience fast defeat especially if they are into trading. But if they are into holding for long term and set their investment intended for that 4 - 10 years time span then provably that they can get more better return with that set up.