Ive been in this space for about 4 years.
Every time I look back on my early trades I cringe.
Had I just held everything I bought, I would be well into the millions in profits (not bad for an initial outlay of about $10,000).
After the Mt Gox saga, & all the other dramas, I decided to offload all my alts for btc, & basically forgot all about crypto til maybe June of this year when I got wind that things were happening in the crypto space again.
Coins that i sold for fractions of a cent were now worth dollars!
Luckily for me Id forgotten about a quite a few alts I bought. The next few weeks were like a treasure hunt. Going through my old wallets & finding thousands worth of alts. Not only good coins, but (arguably) shit coins like dogecoin (1000% profit) & ripple (40000% profit).
From that time I decided Im NEVER dumping again. Take some profits from time to time? Sure. But NOT dumping.
Yesterday I hear news of Namecoin making a comeback & today its Digibyte. Its like winning a small lottery every time a coin you've owned for ages suddenly pops its head up. Thats whats great about holding longterm & whats great about this space.
I now own 35 different coin/tokens & don't intend on dumping any of them. Just building them up & buying new ones with dividends & profit taking from the coins I own.
My advice for noobs...
Find a coin you truly believe in. Invest according to confidence level in the coin (DONT get greedy or desperate or impulsive) & HODL HODL HODL!! Your life will become a potential lottery every day