stuff just keeps dropping more and more, in generally my portfolio is down like ~60% since last month
Are you sure that you picked quality? Is there a game-changer - a catalyst - for the coins you're bagholding that gives you confidence in those coins' future?
I have one - one that I'm riding a greater than 90% loss on - and the catalyst in its case was a community takeover to eliminate a controversial premine and the controversial dev who seems to have vanished.
I sized up the community members beforehand, and felt confident that they could maintain the coin and build its ecosystem over the long term. I also watched its price and saw it slowly shake off its lows. Even though it's well above its bottom now, it's still way way below the price at which I bought in.
I had 0.5 BTC to spare, which I sent up to Bittrex earlier today. With it, I placed a big bid at a close-to-ask price. Not right at the ask, but well above the then-high bid.
That 0.5 BTC was one-sixth of the amount I had originally sunk in. If my whole bid goes through at my price - which I had to up by a teeny bit because at least one other got the same idea - I'll end up with 2.75 times my original stake. 1/6th the BTC for 1.75 X the coins: doing the math will show how much I'm down as of now.
But, as I said, I'm confident that this coin is going to turn around. The general lull, as well as the general cloud this coin is still under, have combined to give me a chance to add to my stake at a much cheaper price. In stock-market lingo, I'm "averaging down."
Just a warning: Although I've had some prior luck with averaging down, it's well known to be a perilous and risky maneuver. It's also known as "throwing good money after bad." Had I done so with Juggalo Coin - there was a time I was tempted to do so - I would have been entirely wasting the BTC. Thankfully, I refrained from buying more Jugglao Coin because there wasn't any catalyst. The dev had deserted and there was no community takeover to look over. No catalyst, no throwing any good BTC after bad.
If I were in your shoes, I'd be thinking that I have a real judgment call ahead of me. Which coins in my bagholding bag are a write-off, which have potential but are kinda iffy, and which have a solid catalyst that rates averaging down through buying more and lowering the cost basis?
One thing about speculation: if you go bargain hunting, you have to be awfully choosy.
Now, I know I'm not you - I know I can't even play you all that well on the Internet
- but if you don't mind a little more nattering, I suggest that it's time to give your portfolio a serious look-over with an eye to pruning. Sorry about your losses, but there is a time for salvage too. Some BTC is better than none.
Just to give you an update, the coin I mentioned above is Quebecoin. It was launched at the tail end of the airdrop country/nation coin fad, turned out to have a dev who was in over his head, and was taken over by a solid new team of community members - all Quebecois francophones, thankfully.
The odd thing about my bid - now is the first time I've experienced this - is that it seems to have kickstarted a kind of foot race that's upped both the bids and the asks. I've actually had to raise my bid by small amounts several times. When I stopped foot-racing, hoping that the climb would cool off, it didn't - not enough for the price to sink back to my bid. So I went back to raising my bid, with smaller volume to go with the higher bid price. Currently, I have the high bid at 803 - up from my starting bid at 700 - and most of my BTC @ Bittrex is still BTC.
https://bittrex.com/Market/Index?MarketName=BTC-QBC[Oh hell -the high bid is now 999 with a substantial bid at 900. You'll see a fuller update here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=708702.msg8106986#msg8106986 ]
EDIT/UPDATE: Pulled back to 900, I waited at 805, then it turned around and headed above 1000 again. I just upped my bid to 1100 and the low ask for QBC is now 1200. My fault for being a blabbermouth, I guess...
