Senator Elizabeth Warren, a prominent progressive and member of the Senate Banking Committee, doesn’t like Bitcoin it appears. According to a report in Yahoo, Senator Warren took umbrage at the amount of energy Bitcoin consumes in completing transactions.
“I also think with bitcoin, and with the other cryptocurrencies, I think there’s a real issue about the environmental impact as well, this whole notion of how much energy is consumed just to keep the currency tracking going.”
As a proponent of the Green New Deal, Bitcoin probably does not square with the controversial policy proposal and Senator Warren’s vision for the future.
But it is not just energy consumption and Bitcoin’s possible carbon footprint that concerns the Senator.
In a video, Warren said it is not just Bitcoin but it is “one after, another and another” as she worried about the cryptocurrency ecosystem. She said that investors were not receiving the types of protection they need like auditing and disclosures.
Last March, Senator Warren told CNBC that Bitcoin was “speculative in nature” and “going to end badly.”
As Chairwoman of two key Senate Subcommittees, including the Subcommittee for Economic Policy and the Senate Finance Committee Subcommittee on Fiscal Responsibility and Economic Growth, Warren is keenly positioned to influence legislation that may impact crypto and Fintech in general.
Overall, Senator Warren is very skeptical about traditional markets and the intersection of Fintech. Commenting on the GameStop/Robinhood/Reddit saga, the Senator stated “these wild fluctuations are just the latest indication that many private equity firms, hedge funds, and other investors, big and small, are treating the stock market like a casino, giving little consideration to the companies, communities, workers, and consumers that may be affected by these risky bets.”