You're still way up on paper.

The payday comes when you actually liquidate your position, and you get the funds out of the exchange.

Lot's of people were way up on Mt. Gox.

Yes, I assume the price drop is due to people selling off their positions, which is also known as “cashing out”. The “smart money” moves in at the bottom of the sell off, if you’re bullish on BTC.

One day later, and it looks like I was right. The buyers have chosen a bottom and the prices are rising again. Lots of people cashed out yesterday.

Ultimately I feel like the payday comes when you’ve bought something you actually want. Prices of all things can go up and down.

If you goal was to buy a house and house prices suddenly increase, even after you cashed out your bitcoin, you might still be disappointed.

Hindsight will tell how much cynicism was warranted, but given the historic exponential volatility anybody who invested and liquidated at opportune moments were probably just lucky.

Nothing wrong with taking risk, but dont pretend you're not gambling.

Considering that almost the entire time since the inception of BTC has been a “good time to buy”, and considering the price today is still twice or more what it was in September, I don’t really follow your logic. I don’t own any BTC, for the record.