Sorry to hear your bad luck.

I only lost 3.75% of my stock value during the 2008 financial crisis and those were stocks I had bought when 16-17 with no experience.
With no proof to back it up I remember saying that the housing bubble and peoples spending habits were crazy before it all went sour.

I am now 23, I got some BTC at 4.8 and recently bought more at 10.10.

My strategy is to think über-long term because I know despite all emotion and manipulation that markets are ultimately logical. This means on a long time frame you CAN predict them.

An example:
Right now I could probably buy Italien bonds or similar at ~7% and be pretty sure that the ECB would print the money to cover it despite all logic that they are a corrupt state that should fail and then reform.
(Much like I thought about pirate bonds)
However I would never invest in such a way because it is not creating real wealth - even IF it worked I would be living in a worse off world which then hurts me.

I heard of BTC in 2011 but wrote it off because you could not divide them by more than 100.000.000 - that's how long term I am. I ONLY changed my mind because I realized the protocol is not as set in stone as I originally thought it was.
I would have sold all my BTC months ago if I had not been able to invent the swarm client (search forum if curious).


My advice to you is to stay in BTC with at least some funds and in general invest small in many things. Also: Invest in small things, big things are MORE likely to fail not LESS.