I'm down about 200K on BTC and alt coins the since 2018.
Does this mean you have lost $200,000 in crypto?
If you had DCA'd £50/$75 a month into crypto since Jan 2013 you'd have approaching $500,000 at the current price and around $800,000 at the recent ATH ($64K). If you'd have begun lending BTC at a time good rates began (about 18 months ago) you'd have $40K+ on top of that in interest. That's on DCA seed money of about $7,200.
I never really recommended anyone buy crypto - other than at two points: Jan 2015 and March 2020, when it hit absolute pain and/or FUD. No one wanted the advice. Some of those have been chomping in once FOMO kicked in ... as the price has 10X'd (BTC), 30X'd (ETH). Some are up 100X+.
A friend told me he was in what, I believe, you Americans call a convenience store. The girl at the till was chatting with someone, "Yeah Greg's bought Doge Coin and Ripple. (smug)." Other girl, "It all sounds very dangerous to me." Till girl: "Don't worry, my boyfriend's really smart."
I commented that this
really smart boyfriend money was probably the market topping-out - time to sell.
Anyone buying in now is buying in at highly elevated prices. The coin market cap was $142B in March 2020. It was almost $2.6B a few days ago. Buying in with one large lump sum was a no-brainier in March 2020. Buying in now is a much higher risk for a lower reward. For Bitcoin my current sentiment is buying in now = potential 70% loss vs. 3.5X upside. As opposed to March when I saw the downside as 0 and upside 10-100X.
Unless you have 10-20 years experience of success in sitting in front of charts, DCAing in is the way to go. As it's late in the game you could also try another method, which is predefining your entry and exit positions. This is a basic play from the 10-20 years XP column. Their game is to spot patterns that can make more winning trades than their loosing trades...
$31K the other day was a nice entry point. Buy at $31K and set you tolerance for losses. Say 10%. You set a sell order at $28K. For the sell, I am looking at parabolic charts + socials + retail mania. $64K did not hit those three. If you don't have a disciplined regime for buying in at elevated prices, you are left with little more than FOMO/FUD emotion; and the humble DCAers will steamroll you with the flakes of their monthly paychecks.
When crypto crashes again, that is the time you want to pile in with large sums. DCA in from then on.