‘I stole from my mom, my brother and my household… I believed Bitcoin would make me a millionaire but it surely ruined my life’: The harrowing tales of these left on the verge of suicide due to their crypto dependancy

Stories like that of hairdresser Jacqui Wilson, 57, who told the Mail how she transformed her family’s fortunes with the £210,000 she has made on Bitcoin, are inspiring.

There is no doubt that some ordinary people, like Jacqui who spent time educating herself about crypto, have found it empowering – a way of making money they never dreamed possible.

Unfortunately, there is darker side, as many Britons lured in by hopes of easy riches have learned the hard way.

The price of Bitcoin has soared in the past few months, peaking at just over $108,000 late last year, largely due to President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to turn the US into the ‘crypto capital of the world’.

It currently stands at around $100,000.

The rally has prompted analysts to predict Bitcoin could hit $120,000 early this year. Some believe it could even double in 2025.

But despite appearances right now, it is absolutely not a sure-fire way of making money. Crypto is volatile; every Bitcoin boom and bust has been accompanied by casualties and this one is unlikely to be different.

The current euphoria may come as very little consolation to those who have already ruined their finances, and their lives, by getting in over their heads.

Away from social media posts of people flaunting the glamourous lives they claim Bitcoin has paid for, others are living a very different reality.

Social media is awash with seemingly rags to riches crypto stories.

What the Instagram and TikTok posts do not mention is that crypto is unregulated and incredibly unstable, capable of pulling people in and leaving them with devastating losses.

Critics say that at best, Bitcoin and other crypto currencies are just a turbo-charged form of gambling.

The growing number of people who are seeking treatment for crypto addiction seems to give this credence.

Bitcoin was worth nothing when it was launched in 2009. However, its rapid growth over the last five years, from $3,439 to more than $100,000 has caught the imagination of investors large and small.

The fear of missing out on the ‘digital gold rush’ is driving enormous interest in Bitcoin, even from staid company pension funds.

But, according to gambling addiction support group Gamcare, approximately 6,700 individuals or nearly 3 per cent of all those who called the National Gambling Helpline last year did so specifically due to problems with cryptocurrencies and other financial trading.

In 2020, that number was zero.

Many of them persisted in trading even after running up large losses and ended up becoming withdrawn from their family and friends, placing huge strains on their relationships.

Michael, who is in his late 30s, is one of them. He believed he had discovered the Holy Grail of a failsafe system for winning on crypto. He persisted with this delusion even as his losses mounted to ruinous levels.

He started off on a profitable streak, but when this screeched into reverse his response was to trade harder and harder in a desperate bid to recoup his money, to the point he needed to seek help for gambling addiction.

Michael, who lives in the south of England with his wife and children, traces his crypto addiction back to his university days, when he discovered he had a talent for poker.

After graduating, he became a professional player and was earning a ‘decent’ living. Then his girlfriend Sam told him she was pregnant. At that point, he decided the responsible thing to do was to embark on a conventional career.

‘I had the incentive not to gamble recklessly as I had to support a child,’ he said.

He got a job at an events company and a mortgage on a family home soon followed.

His first awareness of crypto was in 2016, when a friend claimed to have made a massive profit on Bitcoin and urged Michael to follow suit.

He declined. Then in 2017 Michael received Bitcoin as a prize at a party his employer had organised for staff, but just held on to the small holding he had won.

But during the Covid lockdown, with time on his hands, Michael developed an interest in crypto. Ironically, he sold the crypto he had won in early 2020 when the price plunged.

When it rallied, he bought back in with a vengeance. At one point, he had staked virtually every penny he possessed. It seemed to have paid off, because his crypto holdings were notionally worth more than £2.4m.

Spurred on by a hunger to make even more money, he made the fateful mistake of deciding not to cash in any of those apparent gains.

‘I thought I had figured it out,’ he says. ‘I started buying lots of coins as the market was slowly starting to rebound. I bought one at $3 which soon went up to $22. I could have theoretically made thousands, but didn’t sell any, and it soon plunged to $6. This was a precursor of things to come.’

Bitcoin quintupled in value over the course of 2020 and even though he was making money hand over fist, it was not enough to satisfy Michael. He hatched a plan to lend out his Bitcoins and other crypto coins for cash, using online lending platforms. These match people who want to borrow Bitcoins and have collateral, with those who are happy to lend them out for a set interest rate. Michael used the money he received from lending his Bitcoins to third parties to buy even more cryptocurrencies.

This worked fantastically well at first, because it amplified his gains. Later on, it would multiply his losses. By that time, Michael admits he had succumbed to greed.

‘Rather than thinking about how much money I had, and all the things I could do with it, I was thinking about how much more I could make.’

In May 2021 the crypto market crashed and at a stroke, Michael lost half his supposed crypto wealth.

Even that was not enough to bring him to his senses. He was convinced Bitcoin and the other cryptos would rebound. They did not.

Again, he found himself unable to stop. Rather than cut his losses, he doubled down in a bid to make back the money.

‘I had the mentality of a gambler,’ he said. ‘I started taking bigger and bigger risks at a time when the market was in decline and it made minimal sense to do so.’

Michael then took a different tack and started betting that Bitcoin and the other cryptos would fall, through spread-betting. This is when you bet on whether something will rise or fall in value and whatever gains or losses are incurred are based on that movement. The bigger the price movement, the greater the profit or loss. This time, they did recover, so he lost out yet again.

His mental health began to suffer along with his finances. He would stay up all night, looking at cryptocurrency prices. He started neglecting his job and his family, who, towards the end of that year, staged an intervention. The catalyst came when he missed his mother-in-law’s 60th birthday gathering so he could monitor his crypto trades.

‘That weekend, my brother arrived unannounced to my house and performed an intervention. He explained how my trading was impacting everyone around me – including my family – and based on the mental state he found me in, he was extremely close to sending me to a hospital to get help,’ he said.

After failing to keep promises to stop trading crypto, his state of mind became steadily worse.

He says his wife did ‘an incredible job’ of trying to shield their children from what was happening to him, but his absence from their lives was becoming increasingly obvious. ‘I wasn’t present even when I was home,’ he admits.

For Michael, the path to recovery started when he and his brother confided in his boss, who was supportive: ‘My boss told me that I would lose everything if I continued down this path and that I needed to stop – he was genuinely concerned for my health. The meeting opened my eyes.’

Eventually, he contacted the charity Gamcare and was referred for support from a therapist and treatment. Now, he attends meetings at Gamblers Anonymous every week. He is reluctant to discuss his family and how far he still has to go to rebuild damaged relationships with his loved ones.

‘I completely removed crypto and gambling from my life, and it wasn’t until I did that that I was able to properly begin my recovery,’ he said. ‘I had fallen victim to a gambling addiction that nearly destroyed my life. Thankfully for me, it fell just short.’

Alex, who is in his late 40s and lives in the Midlands with his wife and two children, is another victim of crypto addiction. He sank so low he stole from his own family and even considered selling his house without telling his wife – despicable acts he would never contemplate were it not for crypto having him in its grip.

Already a gambling addict for more than half his life when he discovered crypto trading, he had convinced himself it was a less harmful option. It turned out to be an even more destructive path.

As with Michael, Alex became cut off from his family and friends due to his compulsive round the clock trading. He neglected his previously successful small business, leaving it floundering. Everything and everyone in his life came second to his addiction.

‘It was pure misery. I never saw my family or [went to] work, I was on my phone all the time, day and night. I was there but not really there. I was glued to the phone looking at prices,’ he said.

‘It got to the point where I had a complete lack of empathy.

‘I stole from my family, my brother, my mum. When I had no money, I used theirs, like borrowing money on their credit cards.

‘At one point I was researching how to sell the house my wife and I own without telling her. I was going to take £100,000 out, trade and then put it all back. When I told her, I couldn’t understand why she was crying, I thought I was doing this for the good of my family.’

Even this was not rock bottom. Crypto trading was not enough for Alex who started using crypto casinos online, where he found himself betting on the outcome of Latvian game shows and monopoly using his cryptocurrencies.

‘This was my worst moment; I was doing £1,500 a go (on those games) while hiding it all from my family. I was in bits, suicidal… There is a phrase in recovery, which is sick and tired of being sick and tired. That was me,’ he said.

At this point he realised he needed help and turned to Gamblers Anonymous. Alex stopped trading to work on his recovery and rebuild his relationships with family and friends, as well has his business. ‘I had to leave my ego and accept myself for what I am. I accept that I can’t have a little bet, because if I have a little bet, I will have a bigger bet.’

For Alex, the fact he saw cryptocurrencies as an ‘investment’ blinded him to the dangers they posed.

‘I didn’t think what I was doing was gambling. I believed I knew gambling and this wasn’t it. I convinced myself this was different because I had a system. In my mind, I was a financial trader,’ he says.

‘I look back to when my crypto rose and hit £1million. If I had done that with regular gambling, it would have been easier for me to accept I’m an addict. With crypto, it took me a while to accept that.’

Professor Henrietta Bowden-Jones, NHS England’s National Clinical Adviser on Gambling Harms, fears that the staggering rise in the value of Bitcoin will result in more people getting into trouble through their crypto trading.

‘This is really concerning. There are no measures in place that would prevent people very quickly losing money they cannot afford. When people become addicted to trading, their behaviour can be no different from gambling, with an intense preoccupation and a compulsion to chase losses which can lead them to feel desperate and even suicidal,’ she said.

The Financial Conduct Authority says that it is making progress to develop a regulatory regime that will enable investors to trade cryptocurrencies safely and securely. Until then, warns Matthew Long, its director of payments and digital assets: ‘If you buy crypto, you should be prepared to lose all your money.’

And if you become addicted, you could lose much more besides.

• Names have been changed.

If you need help with a gambling problem or know someone who might, contact the National Gambling Helpline on 0808 8020 133. 

Also visit GamCare at gamcare.org.uk or Gamblers Anonymous at gamblersanonymous.org.uk. You do not need an appointment for GA meetings, you can just turn up.

Additionally, if you need immediate help, you can contact the Samaritans on 116 123.