Elizabeth Warren and Sam Bankman-Fried Spar on Twitter Over BTC Mining

Sam Bankman-Fried – the man in charge of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange – has engaged in an online Twitter feud with Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren after the former presidential hopeful claimed that energy usage in the bitcoin community was contributing to the death of the planet.

Elizabeth Warren Doesn’t Like Bitcoin Mining

Warren – still under the impression that people are paying attention to her – tweeted a New York Times article claiming that the amount of energy used by bitcoin and cryptocurrency miners is roughly the same as many developing countries.

This is an argument we’ve been hearing for many years now. There are several studies out there claiming that the amount of energy used by BTC miners is equivalent to the amount of energy used in nations such as Iceland and Argentina. There are also studies saying the carbon footprint from bitcoin energy use is equal to the one created by Las Vegas, Nevada.

According to Elizabeth Warren, the process of mining new bitcoin units is making the climate crisis worse. On Twitter, she wrote:

We need to protect our planet and crack down on environmentally wasteful crypto mining practices.

Bankman-Fried, however, took issue with Warren’s words, and was quick to retaliate. He mentioned on social media that while tackling the issue was important, bitcoin’s energy use was justified given how many economic benefits the world’s number one digital currency offers users.

In addition, he stated that various changes occurring within the bitcoin space – such as the introduction of the Lightning Network – were helping to lessen the asset’s load.

The argument that bitcoin mining hurts the planet has become rather heated in recent months. One of the most prominent figures working against mining, it can be stated, is Elon Musk, the man behind billion-dollar companies such as SpaceX and Tesla. Last February, the billionaire entrepreneur stated that he was going to permit customers of his electric car company to purchase vehicle units with BTC.

However, this was later rescinded after Musk commented that the amount of energy used in the crypto mining space was unjustified, and that he couldn’t allow such payments and thus more contributions to the crypto space until miners became more environmentally conscious and lowered emissions.

So Many of the Same Arguments

In addition, Kevin O’Leary of “Shark Tank” fame also said that he would no longer be purchasing bitcoin mined in China given that the country was predominantly using non-green energy sources to extract new units from the blockchain.

One of Warren’s biggest claims to fame arrived in the year 2020 when she took on mega Democrats such as Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders in a run for the White House. Warren often came in third place behind both men and ultimately wound up suspending her campaign along with several other hopefuls including entrepreneur Andrew Yang and publishing mogul Michael Bloomberg.

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