What a crazy day of trading. Bitcoin crashed from around $17,000 to around $12,500 (depending on your source) and many alt coins followed a very similar pattern. The coinmarketcap went from a number in the $600 billion range (of course this is inflated from missing coins) and dipped down into the $400 billion dollar range.

Here is a graph showing BTC movement during the main crash:

And here is a graph showing NEO movement during the same time period:

Not only do the graphs follow the same visual pattern, but if you calculate the mathematical relationships of the peaks and troughs you will find that the relative ups and downs are similar percentages for the alt coin and for bitcoin. If you were to buy in at the top of bitcoin, then immediately buy into the alt, then sell the alt at the overall bottom back into bitcoin, then sell the bitcoin, you would really lose a lot of money! You would basically multiply your losses by going into the alt. I imagine this multiplying factor unfortunately affected many new traders today.

A more successful strategy (if you could predict peaks and troughs) would have been to immediately sell alts into bitcoin at the beginning of the dump. Then when it is all done, go back into the alts at the bottom. This would have been a great way to use the market demise to your advantage and increase your alt holdings. Sure, it would have been great to sell all alts into btc and sell btc into fiat. then rebuy into btc and then back into alts at the bottom for maximum advantage. Time to go to bed and stop thinking (please) about all this madness.