Crypto Addiction Could Destroy Lives, Experts Warn

Is it really possible to be addicted to cryptocurrency? The idea is contentious, but it isn’t far-fetched — particularly to the lucrative addiction-treatment industry.

Photo Insert: Experts have likened the lure of cryptocurrency to that of a roulette table.

From a US$90,000-a-week Swiss clinic to relatively inexpensive teletherapies, crypto, of all things, has come to rehab, Charlie Wells and Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou reported for Bloomberg.

The development is, admittedly, a footnote to the grim story of addiction today. Only a tiny fraction of people who dabble in things like Bitcoin will ever face problems. And the precise clinical nomenclature is up for debate.

But both scientific understanding and popular viewpoints are shifting. Psychiatrists lately have been zeroing in on addictive disorders involving behaviors.

“Gambling disorder” was only officially recognized behavioral addiction by the US medical community in the past decade (“pathological gambling,” recognized earlier, was considered an impulse-control problem).

The latest edition of the American Psychiatric Association manual, sometimes referred to as the bible of psychiatry, lists an excessive preoccupation with online video games as deserving of more research.

Scientists have long suspected what Wall Street has always known: Our brains lust after money. The high from cocaine, the thrill of buying Dogecoin: the same reward circuits govern both. Researchers have even linked an elongated version of one neural receptor, dopamine receptor No. 4, to a tendency toward financial risk-taking.

Three things set cryptocurrencies apart, however. The first is novelty. Even now, 14 years after Bitcoin supposedly was invented by the mysterious person or persons known as Satoshi Nakamoto, crypto still feels like a new-new thing.

The second is volatility and, with it, the dopamine-rush thrills of high-wire trading. And then there is a third, and a big one.

Despite the craziness that can prevail on the fringes of crypto, established tokens have taken on the air of legitimate investments. That makes it easier for people to rationalize speculative bets that, in some cases, are little more than a throw of the dice. Plus, crypto-trading plays out globally, 24/7, with the swipe of a smartphone or the click of a mouse.

Experts say all of this can be a recipe for trouble.

“It’s very similar to being at a roulette table,” says Dylan Kerr, an online therapist in Thailand who has treated about 15 self-professed crypto addicts and accepts payment in cryptocurrency.

“It’s seemingly never-ending, and it demands your attention,’’ Kerr says of crypto-trading.

“If you take your eyes off the prize, you could miss out on massive opportunities and incur massive penalties.” Says Lia Nower, director of the Center for Gambling Studies at Rutgers University: “Excessive crypto trading and high-risk stock trading could be forms of gambling and lead to gambling disorder.”

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