As indicated by predictions bitcoin should have achieved 15k$ by end of 2017 and fall in first week of jan 2018
In any case, shockingly its effectively reached 17k$ in 2017.
Should I purchase or hold my btc?I don't plan to sell at any point in the near future.
I think Holding is stupid. If you only hold any coin what you are doing is just expecting the money to grow in long term. In cryptocurrency as we don't have anything like value investing so all this is useless. What you should rather do is trading. If you are really good at trading you can make some extra bits of money in even a bear trend when BTC is going down and down.
You should not say this to a newbie. If he starts to trade, he will lose his money many times faster. Trade - this is for the professional and not for newbie. Investing is something that will be better for someone who does not have experience in trading.