Flags of British public health care are raised in crypto business addiction

Amanda Pritchard, chief executive of the UK's National Health Service, has called on British lawmakers to take action to prevent young people from becoming addicted to crypto trading.

Speaking at the NHS Managers Confed Expo in Manchester on 12 June, earlier this year the NHS opened its fifteenth specialist gambling addiction clinic in response to “real and growing social need”.

“As a society, we have to ask if the methods employed to keep people busy are more sophisticated and we're OK with continuing to pick up the pieces,” she said.

“As I heard from staff when I visited the National Problem Gambling Clinic earlier this year – there are always more opportunities emerging for young people to become addicted to gambling, including in unregulated cryptocurrency markets.

As The Times' Pritchard later reported, “The growing problem is likely to put more demands on the health service, with the NHS left to pick up the pieces – as people spend their money on things that have no fixed value.”

She told conference attendees there was a need to ask questions about “what we want the NHS to do with limited resources”.

“Do we root out problems or accept the NHS as an expensive safety net?” she added.

In June last year, King Charles issued laws to regulate crypto, similar to other financial services.

The UK Treasury rejected a May proposal from lawmakers to regulate crypto-retail trading alongside gambling by July 2023, with the Treasury instead wanting to regulate it as a financial service.

“The operation of the exchange, the seizure of client assets and other things, will come under the purview of the regulator for the first time,” Economy Secretary Bhim Afolami said in April.

Related: Gambling is on the Rise – So Why Is Investing Still Banned?

Many crypto users may be attracted to high-risk tokens in hopes of huge profits. Despite the fact that many people claim that they have no support value, Memecoins have recently become popular.

Decentralized crypto exchanges allow users to place leveraged bets on the price direction of tokens, which often see millions in liquidation when bets go wrong, and the online, decentralized, always-on crypto space has seen a surge in crypto gambling platforms. .

One platform, Polymarket, has seen its locked-in price reach $29 million, according to Defillama. The market offers bets on various events, including sports and election results, on whether Elon Musk will ban Apple devices in his companies.

On June 11, Australia banned the use of crypto and credit cards on online gambling platforms, bringing the rules in line with offline gambling platforms.

Magazine: Cryptocurrency Trading Addiction – What to look for and how to treat it