During the DARK days I always thought about, "What it must be like for the "real early adopter guys" who got in ahead of me, those lucky guys who bought bitcoin when it was in the prior $10 to $100 cycle?" Did they care that much about seeing it go down from $1000 to $500?
Yes, of course you still "care" -- it's easy to get used to seeing the nice big numbers that you see! BUT also, no, you really don't "care" that much any more either, not once you have long since cleared your break-even price and there is virtually NO CHANCE that your average-buy price will ever be seen again.
This seems to be the MAIN THING about crypto, to me... if you just get IN and stay IN long enough, just WAIT a couple years...? Then, yes, you too will be in this club where you don't have to really worry any more about these crazy ups and downs. It takes a while to get there but it's a really good place to be once you arrive!
This is really essentially what it means to be a HODL'ER.
And even if it all goes to shit and crashes and burns in the end, it's for damn sure still BETTER than leaving your money in the bank earning some lousy 0.05% interest rate and subject to the upcoming "bail-in" confiscations.
My two satoshi's for the day
I did the same thing, but 2 cycles earlier. $35 peak in 2011, and bought on the way down to $4. However, I sold most out for a relatively modest profit in 2012-2013, because the successive adoption cycles were not clear to me, there seemed a risk of total loss, and I have always been a trader. I spoke to a few Hodlers, True Believers as we called them at that time, who said they would never sell (and who had, in my mind, a ridiculously large and risky holding).
I didn't really get the point until well into the 2013 super-boom, but I believe there is still a risk of total loss in any crypto.