Please Advise

I bought in about 5 bitcoins at about $1000 average, and I'm starting to panic a little bit...

Should I dump my coins or "dollar cost average" my investment?

Dump-seriously

DCA works... if you're willing to wait several years to recover your principal. HAHAHA!

Better off using your coins to short on maybe 3-10x leverage if you believe it will keep falling. I'm long now though.

Step 1: Maybe don't rely on advice from Veeky Forums since that's probably what got you into trouble in the first place?

Step 2: Figure out your pain threshold. How much do 5 grand mean to you? Is a ~1k loss preferable to investing more money and waiting months or years?

Nobody knows the future, but you should figure out scenarios for yourself. Where would be the threshold that would make you stick to your investment? Then try to gauge how likely this outcome is.

It's not rational, but there's always the psychological aspect. If the current situations makes you "panic a little bit" - maybe you're not cut out for these kinds of highly volatile investments? It you can't handle it, it may be prudent to cut your losses regardless of the money. Hard to put a price on sleepless nights and stress.

Step 3: Make a decision. Never second guess it. Evaluate your decisions from the information you had at the time, not the information you got afterwards. If you've seriously considered your options and arrived at a decision with conviction, nothing the chart will do afterwards will invalidate this decision. Don't bet on good or bad luck in the future, bet on sound decision making given current information.

>maybe you're not cut out for these kinds of highly volatile investments
Buying btc in hopes of profiting is speculating. Not investing. Bitcoin is meant to be a currency. It is not meant to be an investment.

More a question of semantics, but I approve of the idea behind your distinction. BTC is definitely a commodity and not a currency, I see it more as really shitty immature digital gold - hence why I used the term "investment".

Just hold, stop looking at the price, come back in a few months, check your balance, profit, keep holding forever, eventually the world will be forced to adopt Bitcoin.

Your first problem is that you are speculating in a security that you don't understand the fundamentals of.

My advice would be to sell. You're going to learn a lesson here: invest in what you know and understand. "Paying" $500 to learn that lesson is painful but worthwhile.

Whoops. I thought the price was closer to $900. Didn't realize it had fallen further. In any case, this is still a lesson that you need to learn.