Blood on Crypto’s Hands: Real Suicide Rates due to Cryptocurrencies

When an economic mishap happens, people are quick to ask exactly how much was lost. The papers report almost exclusively on the economic impact of the misfortune. They do this while leaving out the real impact these economic disasters have on the lives of ordinary people. 

The Man In Taiwan 

Immediately after the Luna crash, Taiwanese law enforcement found a man dead on the streets outside his apartment. He’d committed suicide by falling from his window. 

The man lived in a luxury apartment building, so he was reasonably well off. However, even the warmth of living in such an expensive building couldn’t save him. In the early hours of May 24, 2022, he stepped out of his window and fell to his death. 

The man was 29 years old, and according to the police investigation, he’d not left a suicide note. There was also no sign of struggle in his apartment, and no one had broken in. 

After investigating further, the police found a text message where the man complained that he’d lost 99% of the value of his Luna tokens in just two days. He’d invested about $2 million in the tokens, and only about $1,000 remained. 

Telangana Man 

An Indian man named Ramalingaswamy decided to take the drastic option of suicide because of his crypto losses. The man booked a hotel room and then consumed poison after he’d locked the door. 

After a while, the hotel workers called the police because they couldn’t access his room. The police arrived, found a way to open the door, and found him dead. The police searched the room and found a suicide note that he’d left for his wife. 

According to his family members, Ramalingaswamy had been investing in online trading via a cryptocurrency app. He initially invested a little money and had gotten good returns. Hence, he decided to invest a lot more, and that led to devastating losses. 

Unfortunately for Ramalingaswamy, he’d lost a lot of money, and he’d raised a bulk of it through loans. The people who’d lent him the money pressured him, and they even took his car. This pressure eventually led to him killing himself. 

Bitcoin Trader 

Stephen Reale took his own life after sending a distraught voice note to his friend. He told his friend to donate his organs if he could, and told his ex-girlfriend that he had “lost everything.” 

Before Stephen’s untimely death, he was a Bitcoin Trader. While not too much is known about the exact cause of his suicide, his messages suggest that he’d lost a great deal of money to crypto. 

This loss plunged him into a deep depression and drove him to take his own life. In the end, his lifeless body was found by passersby in a wooded area of London. 

A Family Affair 

Three members of a family were found dead in South Korea around the same period as the Luna crash. A car belonging to the family was retrieved from the waters off the island of Wando.

Inside the vehicle were three dead bodies. The bodies were that of a 10-year-old, her 36-year-old father, and her 35-year-old mother. The family had presumably gone on a vacation, but after a while, the 10-year-old’s school alerted the police to the absence of the family. 

After investigations, the police found the family’s car and retrieved the bodies from it. Further investigations revealed that the family was in dire financial trouble and had googled Luna, sleeping pills, and a way to “make an extreme choice.”

All these made it quite likely that the family had committed suicide because they had lost all their money on the Luna network. 

Murder-Suicide 

Before the bull run of 2020, Bitcoin suffered a massive loss of value that made a Chinese man lose a huge chunk of his savings. This loss was quite devastating because the bulk of the money belonged to his parents and his wife’s parents. 

Zheng, the man in question, told his wife about his plans to commit suicide because of the losses. However, she convinced him that if he had to die, they had to die together. The couple then decided that they wouldn’t just commit suicide but also kill their daughter as well. 

Zheng first killed his daughter and threw her into the sea. After that, he took his wife’s hand and they jumped into the sea as well. However, Zheng survived the jump, while his wife didn’t. 

After he was rescued, he confessed his crimes to the police and was made to face the law. Ironically, by the time Zheng was in court, the price of Bitcoin had almost doubled. If he’d just waited a little longer, he might have never had the cause to take such drastic measures.