If bitcoin is to become an important world currency, it must go through ups and downs like this.  If it didn't, everyone who got in early would become filthy rich.  But everyone can't become rich, so bitcoin must tug at your emotions to test your beliefs, taunting you to make a move.  It rockets to the moon, promising you wealth beyond your wildest dream.  And then it crashes lower and then lower again, shattering those fantasies you were living in your head.  

But in the end the question is simply: do you want bitcoin to succeed?  

For me it is something to fight for.  In all my life, I have never seen a technology that I feel has as much potential to right so many wrongs in the world.  It is money by the people for the people.  It empowers the individual, which empowers the community, which empowers the world.  It is bottom up money, rather than top-down, and reflects the natural order of human relationships.  It is the system that will allow us to break free of certain chains that have been holding back our species, as we evolve to a higher level of community.  

Life is about making decisions.  We are free people and can do as we choose by accepting the consequences.  At some point, each of us will be old and at the end of our lives.  We will remember the battles we fought and won with pleasure, and those we lost with pride.  Our regrets will instead be of the battles we were too afraid to fight.  We will look back and say, how could I have been worried about loosing (what you'll later perceive as an inconsequential) $25,000 bucks when what was at play was the evolution of money itself.    

I decided a year ago to commit my time over the next several years to working on bitcoin.  I will continue to do so as long as transactions are added to the unforgeable global ledger know as the blockchain.  I will work to advance the technology, use it at every opportunity, favour hiring employees who accept it, and gently promote it across my sphere of influence.  

I believe I am not alone.