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.
I agree that holding bitcoin in "2018" must be the name but definitely not as bad as it seems. I know price has gone down a lot this year but it was also quite low for a long time and stable, which gives you a chance to recover your losses by purchasing more and more.
If you were wise enough to save up enough money to get as much bitcoin as you can during these low prices than you will be lucky when the price goes up. When you buy bitcoin at 14-15 thousand dollars and the price goes to 6 thousand dollars, it wouldn't be a shock if the price goes back to 15 thousand dollars.
However if you keep on buying and drop your average to 7-8 thousand dollars from all the bitcoin you bought during 6 thousand dollar times than you will profit double when it hits 15k. So you see, the trick here is to get as much as you can from as low as you can to drop your own purchasing average.