Right now if you look on https://coincap.io/ you will probably see most of the Cryptocurreny's in the red. Yesterday there was a massive dump of Ethereum that dipped/crashed the entire market. It looks like someone sold 30 million dollars worth of Ethereum on Coinbase and various exchanges for some orders as low as 10 cents each! As Ethereum fell many other coins did as well. What is important to know is that the market has already recovered close to normal levels, but many coins are still down from what they were.
Just like any stock exchange the market can occasionally be manipulated, often by Whales (those who own a lot of a commodity or coin) or by News. When the market gets manipulated or reacts to something a lot of people get scared and end up losing money by selling too low or buying too high.
It is important to realize that crashes and dips are just a normal part of any market. But by looking at the history of your preferred coins you can see that most of the top 100 coins have survived crashes before and generally spring right back up. About a month ago I watched the Ethereum/Bitcoin market crash, Ethereum went from 300 to 100 each coin... A lot of people got spooked and sold desperately trying to get some capital back. Within 3 hours the market reversed itself and within a day it was very close to what it was before the crash. It seems that dips and crashes recover just as quickly as they arrive.
So what should you do in this situation?
It is always important to keep calm when your dealing with money... DO NOT PANIC!
A basic rule of thumb is to buy low and sell high. It is easier said than done but totally doable if you manage your risk. I see 2 things happening today.
Many people might not know what happened yesterday so today it will likely be on the news. It is possible that there will be another dip today with people realizing what happened and cashing out. This means the price of Ethereum and other coins will drop even further.
Most of the Crypto community already knows what happened so the news will have little impact, Traders will be purchasing coins now that they are cheap which will cause the prices to rise back to normal levels.
My recommendation is to put a buy order in at a low price in case the price drops further or just monitor your coin market exchange. When you see the market going up from a low price baseline purchase as many of your selected coin as you can. What I did was just buy some Ethereum at around 300-330 range (knowing it was 350-360 a day or so ago), but its important to know I am in Ethereum for the long run. I fully believe that Ethereum will surpass Bitcoin in the future. So dips are actually great for me as I can buy some coins at a great price. Unless there is more bad news or some other event I see Ethereum steadily increasing in price for the remainder of the month and onward.
I agree. It's best to just give it a break instead of looking at the charts all the time.
One could buy gold