A 23-year-old professional with a major tech company who lost nearly Rs. 30 lakh (approx. $37,500) in the cryptocurrency market tried to commit suicide by jumping off a river bridge in Kolkata, India.
A cab driver who noticed the young man on the Vidyasagar Setu (bridge) alerted the nearby police about his intentions.
Borrowed to Invest in Crypto
The police were able to prevent the techie from jumping off the famous bridge into the river, media reports said, without mentioning the youth’s name.
On being questioned, the youth told the police that he had used money from loans, valuables, and even his mother’s pension to invest in cryptocurrencies and had suffered huge losses. In recent weeks, he was reportedly receiving threatening calls from people who had lent him. In desperation, he decided to commit suicide and come to the famous bridge for this intention.
According to the police, this was the fourth incident when they tried to prevent suicides by jumping off the bridge. In two instances, they were able to save them.
Crypto Adoption Growing
India has reported a high crypto adoption rate and is expected to surpass 150 million crypto users by the end of 2023. According to a HedgewithCrypto study, India is the 7th biggest nation in terms of crypto adoption, with Australia, USA, and Brazil occupying the first, second, and third spots, respectively.
The crypto market has shed nearly $2 trillion of value since its all-time high around November 2021, and investors all over the globe have had their share of bad luck. Globally, crypto investors were also hit by the collapses of some of the biggest firms over the past year.
But despite the prolonged crypto winter and some big companies failing to survive, studies suggest that investors’ confidence in the asset class and intermediaries is still strong.
Lack of Investment Knowledge
But Indian investors seem to lack knowledge and information about safe crypto trading, and this leads to a high number of fraud cases. For example, Bengaluru, which prides itself as India’s largest hub of information technology companies and startups, saw a bevy of crypto scams in 2022, collectively cheating Rs 70 crore (approx. $8.7 million).
CryptoPotato reported last month that a B.Com student committed suicide in the Indian city of Lucknow after losing $4,200 in a Bitcoin scam.
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Arun Srivastav
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