Elizabeth Warren Does Not Appear To Be A Bitcoin Fan: ‘Speculative In Nature And Going To End Badly’

Elizabeth Warren has been busy lately, laying out plans for a tax on the hyper-wealthy and advocating for a $15 dollar minimum wage for the rest of Americans who aren’t in the super-yacht market these days. But she’s also warning that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies may not be the path forward for people who aspire to one day be rich themselves.

On CNBC on Tuesday, the Senator from Massachusetts was asked about Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s recent comments about Bitcoin, which she said could “end badly for some” because it is inherently speculative in nature. And Warren, who sits on the Senate Finance Committee, agreed with that assessment, to say the least.

“I think Janet’s a really smart woman,” Warren said, emphatically, leaving it at that until prompted again to say more. The senator was asked if she felt it was “speculative,” and she then went even further than Yellen, who warned that the market for Bitcoin is highly “speculative.”

“‘Speculative in nature and going to end badly,’” Warren said. “I don’t think Janet left a lot of room for ambiguity.”

Warren was, of course, trying to quote Yellen. And she slightly misquoted her, which was corrected by the anchor doing the interview. But it’s pretty clear that Warren is skeptical of its marketplace and where things are headed. There are a lot of concerns about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies (Warren Buffet has famously proclaimed that he will never invest a penny in them) as they see a relative boom in recent weeks, in part with the rise of other Non Fungible Tokens and speculation on those blockchain-based markets. There’s also the environmental impact of all that energy spent to mine these coins in the first place. But as some see Bitcoin as an obstacle to Warren’s tax plans, she seems intent to tell folks not to sink a bunch of their money into the platform in the first place.