Crypto Addiction: A Hidden Epidemic?

Danzico was swayed by the global frenzy for trading digital currencies during the pandemic, and very quickly it developed into an obsession.

“I’m going to have these sleepless nights trying to get these charts out of my head,” said the Barcelona-based designer and visual journalist. “I thought I was losing my mind.”

Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ethereum are notorious for their volatility, and the 39-year-old sees “years of money won and lost in a very short amount of time”.

His emotions went on a similar rollercoaster, not helped by the fact that he was speculating in the depths of a Covid-19 lockdown. His wife saw him getting worried and angry.

Danzico declined to explain what damage the experiment caused to his finances – suffice it to say that “for our bank account, it was bad”.

Reflecting on a trip to the United States months later, the cheerful American is mostly relieved that he gave up his addiction too quickly.

But as cryptocurrencies have evolved from a niche interest to a more mainstream one, Danzico says the world has a much deeper experience than his own.

“We are talking to millions of people who are trading cryptocurrencies,” he said.

“If a small fraction of those people are becoming addicted, we’re talking about a massive potential mental health crisis that I don’t think the world has ever seen.”

– Dark of Crypto Twitter –

You need look no further than Twitter, where crypto enthusiasts congregate, to get a sense of the mental health consequences of the token’s chronic volatility, Danziko pointed out.

Tweets of “people discussing deep depression, really extreme thoughts of isolation and suicide” are often accompanied by a drop in value.

In September, the story of a Czech man in his disastrous attempt to get rich with cryptocurrency – spiraling debt takers as he attempted to recoup his losses – went viral on Twitter.

Depressed and homeless, he was ashamed to even ask for help. “When I called my mom I said it’s all fine, I have (a) good job, place to sleep etc. I was actually starving,” wrote a user named Jirka, who then Started rebuilding his life.

Disturbed by his own experience and those of others described online, Danziko began researching crypto addiction, writing his findings in an article for crypto news site Cointelegraph.

They found just one small-scale study into crypto addiction in Turkey and a few practitioners from Thailand to the US offering professional help.

Experts view this phenomenon as gambling addiction, noting parallels with Wall Street traders whose investments have spiraled out of control.

Scottish rehab clinic, Castle Craig, describes crypto addiction as a “modern-day epidemic”.

The problem is more common in men, the clinic notes on its website, “but it may simply be because women trade fewer cryptocurrencies than men”.

– Art as Medicine –

For Danzico, it is “dangerous” that more specialized help is not available. He suspects that part of the problem is that people don’t realize how mainstream crypto speculation has become.

Trading platform Crypto.com estimated in July that there are now 221 million people trading around the world. The figure had more than doubled in six months as millions began to stay at home during the pandemic.

It was only after Danzico began trading himself that fellow traders were everywhere.

A neighbor who will be ethereum spiked every time; He used to watch young men on the street fretting over crypto charts on the phone screen.

Danzico kicked his habit by pouring his passion into photography, using a lightweight projector to superimpose images of crypto logos and charts onto the world around him.

Finding a way to express how the all-consuming business “somehow allows me to grow beyond that”, he said.

He is now, with self-confessed irony, selling digital versions of the images as NFTs – non-fungible tokens, for which he is paid in Ethereum.

Danzico still holds some crypto assets, and believes that the future of decentralized finance is bright. But he wants society to confront what he calls “an enormous mental health crisis.”

“You have kids who are literally becoming millionaires in their parents’ basement and then lose it before they run out to dinner,” he said.

“Start talking about what we can do.”

This story has been published without modification in text from a wire agency feed. Only the title has been changed.