If crypto wasn't involved, do you think this employee would have gotten fired?
I think anything they were doing habitually that was taking away from their time at work would have gotten them fired. Whether that is gambling, porn, video games, stocks, crypto trading, memes, nfts, etc. I doubt his boss cared much what he was doing, only that he wasn't doing his work. That makes you wonder if he were a high performing employee, what sort of nonsense would his employer put up with as far as gambling before letting him go.
That would be the grounds for their employer to fire that person. Since if they didn't see anything wrong and the person who's into that activities doesn't showing any bad performance on his job also risk for his fellow employee then for sure that they would never think or go into that situation to fire him out especially if the employee is good performer in his job.
But since the news spread out is the person get into that situation then I guess they cannot take it more longer and the management need to take action before everything goes worse.
People need to know that they should not let their selves caught up by addiction since it will really never give any good results to them.