I am assuming the OP made a typo and meant 2018 instead of 2017.

Holding Bitcoin was also painful in 2015. The year was actually less volatile than it is today and basically there was good news after good news but Bitcoin still traded sideways.

Some exchange got hacked and there was a stop hunt pretty much on some exchanges and many got stopped out because the yearly low was breached and was completely bought up. And then later we finally broke the yearly high and kept basically advancing in price ever since.

I actually thinking holding bitcoin in 2015 was much more painful than in 2018 since it was much less known and everybody assumed it was a scam.