Many many people say they are holding this, holding that for the "long term" but please tell me what exactly is your guys definition of "long term"?
For me, 1 year is considered long time. I began investing this January and I will hold one year and cash out everything January 2019. So by your definition, is this more short term or long term? Is 1 year enough time to see gains?

Answering your last question even one day sometimes is enough to see gains, you could just buy some alts for 0.01 and sell them for 0.30 after one day, imagine that you bought a 1000 of them... So longterm is defined individually