– If you suspect that your crypto-obsessed friend may be mentally ill, you may be right.
Digital asset holders tend to exhibit higher levels of ‘bad’ personality traits such as narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy and sadism, according to a recent academic paper conducted by researchers at the University of Toronto and the University of Miami and published in the journal PLOS One.
“The results suggest that cryptocurrency ownership is associated with ‘dark’ personality traits,” the report said, adding that “individuals who bought cryptocurrencies were on average more likely to believe conspiracy theories, support extremist groups, and share populist sentiment.”
The study, which surveyed 2001 American adults, indicated that cryptocurrency holders tended to score higher on measures of need for chaos, insanity, schizophrenic traits, intolerance, victim mentality, and psychological agitation, terms that indicate a sense of loss of personal freedoms. Nearly 30% of respondents said they own, or owned, cryptocurrencies.
It is almost unnecessary to say that there are plenty of examples of ‘dark’ personality traits in the traditional corporate world as well. While this study is the first of its kind to draw conclusions between cryptocurrency holders and psychological traits, other studies have provided links between psychopathy and abusive institutional leadership.
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A 2014 research paper published in Elsevier found a significant positive correlation between employees’ ratings of their supervisors’ psychopathic traits and workers’ reported psychological distress and job satisfaction.
For example, the study’s conclusions came as no surprise to Chris Wheeler, a 57-year-old crypto trader.
“You have to be literally crazy to be involved in something where your net worth goes up a million dollars and goes down by a million dollars in a day,” Wheeler said. Nothing is guaranteed.’
In 2021, the price of Bitcoin soared to nearly $69,000 before falling below $16,000 in 2022 and then rising again to an all-time high of nearly $74,000 this year. Over the past few years, the digital asset industry has been hit hard by everything from the conviction of leaders for fraud to presidential candidate Donald Trump promoting a strategic national stock of bitcoin.
The researchers wrote that the strongest indicators of whether someone owns cryptocurrency include variables such as being male, having a victim mindset, or relying on marginal social media sources for news.
To be sure, the sample of study participants was relatively limited, and those surveyed were asked to report their own characteristics, but its conclusions still hunge.
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