Redditor could lose young family after crypto trading addiction spirals

cointelegraph.com:

A self-confessed crypto trading addict and father of two is facing the dire prospect of losing his family forever after secretly racking up $180,000 in debt from his crypto trading habits. 

Posting his story on the r/relationship advice subreddit on Feb. 21, Reddit user “Leather_Opposite2135” said he started dabbling in cryptocurrency trading around 2021.

Fast forward two years to the present day and he’s been kicked out by his wife and is at least $180,000 in debt.

“It started just dabbling,” said Leather. “It’s a tech space so I found it very interesting. Joined a bunch of online spaces (discord) and eventually watched a few people trading btc and immediately got hooked.”

Within a year, he had already “burnt” $50,000 from trading cryptocurrency, with the funds lost coming mainly from his software business.

“Skip forward another year and it got really bad,” said Leather, noting that his addiction had started to take hold as he started to fund his trading through other means, such as personal loans and credit cards.

“I was gambling on my phone when I went to the bathroom, when the kids were sleeping, on my computer when not busy with work.”

Leather noted that around three weeks ago he finally came clean about the debt to his wife, who didn’t take the news well, threatening to leave him and take ownership of their house.

He’s since banned himself from crypto, handed over control of his trading accounts to his wife, and has been seeing a gambling addiction counselor weekly, but admitted it was initially hard to shake the addiction.

The original post has since been deleted by Leather_Opposite2135 on Reddit but is neither the first nor last story shedding light on the possible dangers of crypto trading addiction.

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