By my experience, Riding the wave is the easier one, but is also riskier since you never know when the wave will stopped. But Buying the dip mostly turn your investment into profit slowly but its sure.
I agree that buying the dip is the best option out of the two, however we must understand that during the times in which we are seeing a strong decrease in the price of bitcoin there is a lot of panic in the markets, and as such it means that if you buy during one of those instances it is going to be difficult to keep holding your coins as all of what you are going to be reading at the time is about how the price will keep going down and that you need to sell your coins.