For me it's not a lose. The best strategy is sell at the peak and buy at the dip. You never know what's coming so better to take advantage of the ups and downs. But this is only for people who has all day to monitor the price of bitcoin but if you are a long term holder then there's nothing wrong.
The thing is long term holder is more or less sure to make a profit but short term traders can lose just as quickly as they earn. Personally I don't believe there are many traders that consistently make a profit so I would always advise people to just hold on to their coins.
Due to the fluctuations in bitcoin price, I agree that you can lose as quickly as you earn and if you are not that experienced trader or a newbie in trading then the best way would be just to hold on for it in a long time because bitcoin is still bullish so having to wait for a few months or years is a safe way unless there is a fortuitous event that may cause the price of bitcoin to drop.
Yeah! New traders should better stay away from exchanges and trading. For them, the best option is to hold onto their coins and take them out of the wallets when the prices are going up. As you talked about bitcoins, dumping will just help traders to buy bitcoins; it is not good for bitcoins themselves. Indeed, bitcoins have great future.
There's convince if you will allow your bitcoins on exchanges. There are situations that they are helpful, just like what happened before the fork, if you have bitcoin on bittrex you probably have BCH and you can sell it immediately. But we are now on different case here, traders can do both things holding while trading.