Genuine association or spurious responding? Experimental evidence on the correlation between cryptocurrency trading and problem gambling severity index scores

Background and aims Cryptocurrency trading has become a popular activity worldwide, which has been correlated with harmful gambling as measured by the Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI). However, in addition to being non-causal, these correlations may partly or in whole follow from methodological weaknesses, such as failing to screen out non-gamblers, or failing to instruct participants to not consider cryptocurrency trading a form of gambling. Methods In a large-scale pre-registered 2 × 2 online experiment (N = 4,781), we hypothesised that if observed correlations were driven by spurious responding, they would be credibly weakened by screening out non-gamblers (compared to no screening), and by instructing participants to not consider cryptocurrency trading as a form of gambling (compared to no-instruction). Cryptocurrency trading engagement was assessed via self-reported trading frequency, price monitoring frequency, and number of coins owned over the past year. Results While gambling screening lowered reported PGSI scores, trading frequency remained positively associated with the PGSI across all conditions ( β = 0.008, 95% HPDI [0.007, 0.010]), with no credible evidence that screening or instruction moderated the association. Exploratory analyses showed similar patterns for price monitoring frequency and the number of coins owned. A combined model showed that trading frequency explained the most variance in the PGSI outcomes. Conclusions These findings provide further evidence of a genuine correlation between cryptocurrency trading and harmful gambling, and may inform future research and policy discussions regarding how gambling-related consumer protections could be relevant to cryptocurrencies.