With all the graphs awash in a sea of red for the last couple of weeks, the crypto currency market has been pretty rough for those of us who are mining or trading coins and tokens. My (always modest) earnings around the end of last year are now literally half what they were; fortunately, since my initial hardware investment is now finally paid off, I still manage to realize a small profit each week (about $15-$20, after the cost of electricity).

After several months of converting my mined coins to dollars to pay off my original hardware investment, my new strategy is to HODL for now - hold onto what I mine, in the hope that a market recovery will happen. My entry into this hobby several months ago was not really a desire to have money to buy cool stuff (I am an older guy); it was always the idea of helping to pay down existing debt like credit cards and so on (once the initial mining hardware cost was recouped).

To that end, I can now hang on to whatever I mine for the next several months (or however long it takes) before "cashing out". I don't plan to hang onto this crypto indefinitely; there is an end game of sorts - but the "cash equivalent" of most coins is so low right now, that in my mind the only sensible thing is to HODL.

Perversely, that fact that many other people are probably doing that may well be affecting the very market price drops that we are all trying to ride out...

I mine both Ethereum and more recently also Electroneum (I gave up on Sia Coin after the "difficulty" went through the roof following a fork of that product). I also traded some Ethereum for Ripple, and am holding on to that as a medium- to longer-term investment too.

Fortunately, the return on investment for my hardware was just completed, and so the miserable performance of the crypto market right now - while frustrating - is not crippling for me personally, and I am still hopeful that to simply keep on mining and HODLing is the thing to do.