One of my youngest bitcoin customers died from an overdose

I got a telephone call from the police today, crime section. As some of you know, I do sell and buy bitcoins and other crypto currencies domestically for bank- and cash payments.

A young man, foreigner, 16 years old, was buying Bitcoin from me by cash (no big amounts) in late 2016 and early 2017. He seemed to be a clever, intelligent and friendly guy. Then he apparently bought some illegal drugs on the dark web spending bitcoins on it (some totally unknown drug to me - I suppose some modern synthetic stuff) ... and died from it.

This have put some mental stress on me today. I have no words for it. He would have been a smart, experienced and quite rich 17 years old boy today if he would have saved those bitcoins - instead he's four feet under.

I do have a 13 years old son myself.

I've had some few underage customers buying bitcoins from me, but I always thought ... why not. It's their money, and they are big enough to decide how to use it. Further, credit card payments are difficult by underage people - my own son has frequently been throwing me cash and asking me to buy games for him using my credit card, it sucks! Buying games for hard-earned bitcoins is a prime example where bitcoin shines. For a while (with bitcoin transaction fees still being insignificant) I even paid my son small amounts of money by bitcoins for going out with the garbage and other mundane tasks.

The guy was a foreigner - probably not an immigrant, immigrant children tend to learn the language quickly, possibly he was here for an exchange stay. He's English was spotless, I suppose he could have been British. Came to think, I had some friends that went abroad for a year when we were at that age, and one thing I eventually discovered was that they were too young to stay one year away from home. They changed far too much during that year, they were not the same person I once knew when they got back again. One of them was fanatically against alcohol and any other kind of drugs when he left - and he stayed sober for almost a year in Germany - until he flipped so totally and absolutely over. When he came home he was drinking, smoking non-stop and using snuff, I believe he was even trying out more heavy narcotics for a while.

I don't feel guilty in any sense - this wasn't my fault. It was totally unexpected for me that such an apparently clever guy would rush to the "dark markets" and buy things that weren't good for him - and then die from it. Should I have anticipated the risk and asked why a young guy like him wanted bitcoins? Maybe I should ask the next fellow looking young and wanting to buy bitcoins for cash ... "what do you need those bitcoins for"? Anyway, I feel terribly sad for this fate.