Virtual Currency Addiction: A Hidden Pandemic?

When Matt Danzico started seeing cryptocurrency symbols on grocery packages, he knew he had a problem.

Danzico got caught in the global crypto trading frenzy during the pandemic and quickly became an obsession.

“I often had sleepless nights, rolling back and forth and trying to get the charts out of my head. I thought I was out of my mind‘says the Barcelona-based designer and photojournalist.

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum are notorious for their volatility and the 39-year-old has seen profits and losses equal to his salary in a very short period of time over many years.

His feelings change like a roller coaster ride. His wife noticed that he was getting worried and angry.

Danzico declined to say what damage the crypto game has done to his finances – just saying, “for our bank account, that sucks“.

When he looks back on his return trip to the USA many months later, he is relieved that he recovered relatively quickly from his new addiction.

However, as cryptocurrency moves from being a mere group of people to a more “mainstream” concern, Danzico thinks experiences are much darker than what happened to them.

“We know that tens of millions of people trade cryptocurrencies. If a fraction of these people get addicted, there will be a potential psychological crisis on a scale I believe the world has never seen.“, I said.

Danzico advises that you don’t need to look any further than Twitter, where crypto enthusiasts gather to learn more about their mental health implications.

The tweets from people discussing depression, really extreme thoughts about isolation and suicide are often accompanied by price drops.

In September, the story of the catastrophic crypto-rich attempt by a Czech man went viral on Twitter as the more he tried to make up for his losses, the more he was inundated.

Depressed and homeless, he was so embarrassed that he dared not ask for help. “When I call my mom I just say everything is fine, I have a good job, I have a place to sleep, but the reality is that I am starving.“Wrote a character named Jirka. Now he is starting to reshape his life.

Confused about his own experiences and those of others online, Danzico began researching crypto addiction and wrote about his discoveries in an article for the crypto news website Cointelegraph.

He only found a small study of crypto addiction in Turkey and a few therapists who provided professional help in Thailand and the United States.

Experts view the phenomenon as a form of gambling addiction and note similarities with Wall Street dealers whose investments are spiraling out of control.

Castle Craig, a rehab clinic in Scotland, describes crypto addiction as a “modern plague”.

This clinic advises on their website that this problem is more common in men. “but that could be because women trade less crypto than men“.

It was alarming for Danzico not to have more specialized help. He suspects that part of the problem is people failing to realize how normal cryptocurrency speculation has become.

In July, the Crypto.com exchange estimated that 221 million people were trading worldwide. That number has more than doubled in six months as millions of people started participating because they were “stuck” at home during the pandemic.

It was only after Danzico started trading that he noticed signs that there were crypto players everywhere.

A neighbor often hums every time Ethereum spikes. He also often sees young people on the street looking nervous looking at a cryptocurrency table on their phone screen.

Danzico began to give up the habit by turning his crypto obsession to photography.

Now, with avowed irony, he sells digital versions of these photos as NFTs (non-fungible tokens) and receives payment in … Ethereum.

Danzico still has some crypto assets and believes that decentralized funding has a bright future. However, he wants society to face what he calls “a great psychological crisis“.

“You see children literally become millionaires in the basement of their parents’ house and then … lose everything before running to dinner. What we can do is talk about it“, I said.

Nha Thanh (according to IBTimes)

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