Former British Parliament member Nick Boles called on central banks to ban bitcoin, in a tweet Tuesday (Feb. 9).
“Central banks should ban the trading of it, and force anyone who holds Bitcoin and wants to use it in any transaction, to exchange it for another currency that does not have such a damaging side effect,” Boles said on Twitter.
Boles was referring to its environmental impact in reaction to BBC correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones tweeting that the cryptocurrency had overtaken Argentina in annual energy consumption. Cellan-Jones cited data from the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index.
“There are other cyber currencies that do no harm in the real world at all,” Boles, who represented Grantham and Stamford in parliament from 2010 to 2019, also wrote.
It’s estimated that bitcoin consumes 77.9 TWh a year and emits greenhouse gasses at levels comparable to New Zealand’s from bitcoin mining activities, reported Cointelegraph.
In other news, a Wisconsin woman was charged with using the internet to hire someone for murder, paying via bitcoin, according to the Daily Beast.
Three journalists became aware of the plot while working on an investigative story about the dark web. They told the intended target, who reported it to the FBI, the report stated.
“The murder-for-hire site administrator responded to [the suspect’s] message and requested proof of payment in the form of bitcoin,” the complaint read, according to the Daily Beast. “[Suspect] responded by sharing a screenshot of a bitcoin wallet with a value of approximately $5,633.87.”
FBI agents were able to trace the messenger’s IP address, as well as the email address and phone number connected with the bitcoin wallet, leading them to Kelly Harper’s residence, where they arrested her before the plot could advance.
Harper also appears to have made a bitcoin payment to another murder-for-hire website administrator, according to the journalists, the Daily Beast reported. Harper allegedly admitted to the agents that she had paid “bitcoin to the administrator of a murder-for-hire dark web site in order to have [the target] killed.”
Meanwhile, a Florida man was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud as a member of crime group that operated a SIM swap scam, according to a press release from the Department of Justice’s U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Louisiana.
The scam, which targeted at least 19 people, involved routing a victim’s incoming texts and calls to another phone, after which the criminal was able to access their personal accounts, including bank accounts, cryptocurrency accounts and email accounts, the release stated.
Stephen Defiore of Brandon, Florida, the second member of the scam to be charged, was paid approximately $2,325 for his role, according to the release. He faces up to five years in jail and a fine of up to $250,000.
Lastly, Landry’s CEO of Landry’s Tilman Fertitta told CNBC that his luxury car dealership Post Oak Motor Cars has sold 17 cars for bitcoin in the last three years since it began accepting the cryptocurrency.
“Tesla taking it is much more important than me taking it, but believe it or not, we’ve sold 17 cars — Bentleys and [Rolls-Royces] — with bitcoin,” said Fertitta, per CNBC.
We’ve always talked about being innovative and ahead of everybody else and don’t be a dinosaur around here or you won’t last,” he added, according to the report.
Bitcoin surged after news that Tesla had purchased $1.5 million in bitcoin on Monday (Feb. 8).
We’re always on the lookout for opportunities to partner with innovators and disruptors.
Learn More