It’s Bitcoin anonymous ...addicted to cryptocash

A RISE in people buying cryptocurrency has led to ‘bitcoin addiction’, doctors have warned.

The UK’s only treatment for this, at Castle Craig Hospital in West Linton, Peeblesshire, is admitting more patients than ever.

Cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoins, only exist online but are bought using real money.

And, similar to gambling addicts, people are becoming obsessed with betting on and monitoring the value of their ‘digital cash’.

While some established forms of cryptocurrency hold their value, others are volatile and can increase and decrease in value by the second.

Last year, one called BitTorrent dropped 97 per cent in value in a day – from $0.02 to $0.0006.

Castle Craig’s specialist addiction treatment programme has welcomed record numbers of admissions, from three patients in 2017 to 15 in 2019.

One, a father of two, had invested £750,000 and became obsessed with monitoring the markets. To stay awake, the 35-year-old started taking cocaine. He ended up losing his family and his business.

Tony Marini, an addiction therapist at Castle Craig, said: ‘They are gambling on whether the value is going to go up or down.

‘It’s an escape from reality. It is like trading on the stock market but with cryptocurrency.

‘For 24 or 48 hours at a time addicts are constantly looking at their cryptocurrency and then they get crossaddicted to things like cocaine and speed. Gamblers love the ups and downs of cryptocurrency – it is so fast, so more people are getting hooked on that, especially people with big money.

‘There needs to be an intervention, but who would it come from? Cryptocurrency can be from anywhere – does the UK do it or the US?’

Around 13 million people around the world trade in cryptocurrency and the global scale of addiction to trading the coins is not known.

Castle Craig set up its specialist addiction programme in 2017. More than 25 patients have enrolled so far and tend to stay four to six weeks.

Some live at the hospital for up to a year, with daily treatments such as group therapy and individual cognitive behavioural therapy sessions.

Mr Marini said: ‘People can buy just about anything with cryptocurrency on the dark web. They are buying everything they can on the dark web, whether that be drugs or someone to kill someone else.’

The hospital warns cryptocurrency addiction is a ‘modern-day epidemic’, and crypto addicts may spend all their time and money on online trading, chasing their losses, pawning belongings to raise funds, experiencing depression and mood swings, and denying they have a problem.

Bitcoin, left, launched in 2010, is the best known cryptocurrency.

Initially, it was worth about 30p but reached a peak price last year of almost £13,500. Bitcoin is now accepted by many websites – including beauty brand Lush and even the Royal National Lifeboat Institution.