Bitcoin’s price charts are soaring again, reaching new highs of £80,000 ($110,000) in 2025. Financial influencers beam across TikTok feeds. Reddit threads throb with dopamine.
Bitcoin’s price charts are soaring again, reaching new highs of £80,000 ($110,000) in 2025. Financial influencers beam across TikTok feeds. Reddit threads throb with dopamine. And quietly behind locked doors and sleepless screens – a different kind of surge is building.
Crypto addiction.
It’s not a new phenomenon, but it’s one we’ve failed to name loudly enough. As someone who’s spent years working with addiction treatment providers and as someone who understands the wiring of a brain primed for compulsion – I believe we’re on the edge of another reckoning.
Because crypto addiction isn’t just about money. It’s about escape. It’s about urgency. It’s about status. It’s about brains that are magnetically drawn to risk, novelty, and the illusion of control. And for people like me – people with ADHD – it’s a tailor-made trap.
The New Digital Casino
Let’s be clear: crypto trading is not investing. It’s not long-term wealth planning. It’s not a measured hedge against inflation. Not when it’s done in 30-second intervals with your heart pounding and your rent money at stake.
It’s gambling, algorithmically optimised, visually gamified, and available 24/7 without ever leaving your bedroom.
The interfaces mimic the dopamine mechanics of slot machines. Flashing lights, celebratory pings, instant feedback loops. Many platforms now even offer leverage, letting you bet more than you own, upping both the stakes and the adrenaline. And with meme coins, NFTs, and “pump and dump” schemes marketed as entrepreneurial goldmines, there’s a seductive logic: if you’re not getting rich, you’re just not trying hard enough.
But in reality, these environments prey on the same neural pathways that fuel gambling addiction. And just like with fixed-odds betting terminals or online poker, the house always wins. It just takes longer, and sometimes, it wears a hoodie and says “decentralised.”
Who’s Most at Risk?
The profiles are shifting. Traditionally, gambling addiction skewed older, male, and offline. But crypto is a different beast. It’s capturing younger audiences, digital natives, and crucially those with ADHD or trauma histories.
Why? Because this isn’t just about thrill-seeking. It’s about regulation. Dopamine regulation, emotional regulation, impulse control. In other words, the very things neurodivergent brains struggle with most. In fact, some 20% of problem gamblers are thought to have ADHD.
Crypto trading gives you a sense of mastery in a world that often feels overwhelming. It becomes your focus, your escape, your identity. I’ve seen people spiral hard. One missed trade turns into ten. One payday lost becomes a second mortgage. And because the language of crypto is wrapped in tech utopianism, people don’t even realise they’re in trouble.
They just think they’re “early adopters”.
How many more people need to become “bag holders” before we start to take this problem more seriously?
The ADHD–Crypto Loop: A Perfect Storm
I was diagnosed with ADHD at 14, and I’ve lived enough years inside this brain to know its traps (and strengths).
ADHD isn’t about distraction – it’s about dopamine. It’s about a hungry brain, constantly seeking stimulation, novelty, reward. That’s why so many of us gravitate towards extremes. Extreme productivity. Extreme burnout. Extreme risk. The crypto market, with its endless ticker movements, meme hype cycles, and promise of instant transformation, is like jet fuel for a brain like mine.
You’re not just checking prices – you’re chasing meaning. One trade becomes a lifeline. A portfolio becomes a personality. And in the depths of dysregulation, the numbers start to feel like a story you need to win.
Crypto trading doesn’t just reward compulsive loops – it’s built perfectly on them. And for neurodivergent people, especially those undiagnosed or untreated, it becomes a form of self-medication. It numbs the boredom. It silences the shame. It gives structure and focus in a world that’s usually fragmented and loud.
Until it takes everything.
But dopamine-seeking behaviours are not only for brains like mine, they are designed for people who need any form of escape. That goes for trauma and addiction too. And if you know anything about all three, there’s often huge overlap.
What Recovery Looks Like
Crypto addiction is slippery to diagnose because it doesn’t always look like a problem at first.
There’s no hangover. No track marks. No physical withdrawal. But the emotional wreckage is just as real: anxiety, insomnia, mood swings, financial ruin. People isolate. Relationships break down. Jobs are lost. And still, many don’t see it as an “addiction” because the culture tells them they’re just being entrepreneurial.
But let me make one thing crystal clear, gambling addiction takes lives – and crypto addiction is no different.
That’s where our treatment system has to step up.
Most traditional addiction centres are still catching up to the reality of digital compulsions. Crypto addiction falls through the cracks too new, too niche, too misunderstood. But the core drivers are the same as gambling, and the treatment needs to reflect that. Behavioural therapy. Trauma work. Peer support. And crucially, neurodivergent-aware care that understands why some people are more vulnerable than others.
I’ve spoken to clients who arrived at rehab with six-figure crypto losses and no language to explain their pain. Underneath that shame was a spiral of dopamine-dependence, loneliness, and emotional dysregulation.
And once they found a therapist who spoke their language and explored it with curiosity – they started to understand themselves better.
Let’s Call It What It Is
Crypto addiction is real. It’s growing. And it’s not going away just because the bull market cools.
As a society, we need to name it clearly. As treatment providers, we need to prepare for it. And as people who care about mental health – especially in neurodivergent communities – we need to stop seeing compulsive behaviour as a flaw, and start seeing it as a signal.
A signal that someone is trying desperately to regulate something that feels unmanageable.
When Bitcoin surges, don’t just follow the money. Follow the suffering. Because behind every “to the moon” tweet, there’s someone quietly crashing back to Earth.
What the System Must Do Next
We are entering a future where addiction will no longer look like it used to. There won’t always be empty bottles or crack pipes or betting slips. Sometimes, it will be a man refreshing Binance 300 times a day, ignoring his kids. A woman pouring her life savings into altcoins based on a Reddit thread. A teenager learning about leverage before they’ve learned how to cook a meal.
And if clinicians, therapists, treatment centres, the media – don’t evolve our understanding now, we’ll be too late.
Crypto addiction needs to be acknowledged not just by rehab centres, but by the financial world, mental health services, policymakers, and tech companies. Exchanges should be held to the same regulatory scrutiny as betting platforms. Trading apps should offer cooling-off periods, self-exclusion options, and real-time prompts about risk exposure.
Treatment for crypto addiction needs to combine the insights of gambling therapy, trauma-informed care, digital detox, and ADHD/compulsivity frameworks. This isn’t about telling someone to “just stop”. It’s about understanding why they couldn’t and helping them build a life where they no longer have to.
Where Help Begins
At Abbington House, we’re already seeing these cases walk through our doors.
They’re often high-functioning. Intelligent. Articulate. But behind the success, they’re falling apart. Because crypto addiction, like all addictions, is about pain. It’s about disconnection. It’s about people trying to escape something inside themselves only to get lost in something even darker.
Our approach is different. We don’t shame. We don’t pathologise. We listen. We ask what the addiction gave someone before we try to take it away. Because once you understand what crypto filled in someone’s life, you can start helping them build something better.
We integrate trauma therapy and holistic therapies that meets people where they are. This is recovery with nuance. Recovery with compassion. Recovery that understands the world has changed and so must we.
A Final Word
I’ve seen lives changed by the financial freedom crypto can offer. But I’ve also seen lives ruined by its darker edges – for the most part, it is purely gambling. When your dopamine becomes dictated by market cycles, when your self-worth rises and falls with coin values, when your relationships collapse under the weight of your secret trades – you’re not in control anymore.
Addiction doesn’t care what platform you use. It only cares that it works – until it doesn’t.
So as Bitcoin hits new highs, let’s be honest about what else is rising: the number of people losing themselves behind the screen.
And let’s make sure, wherever they fall, there’s someone ready to catch them.