Ln September 26, Annalena Baerbock, will know whether she will succeed Angela Merkel as Chancellor following the parliamentary elections in Germany. At the height of her 40 years, she was appointed as leader by the “Grünen”, the German Green party. For her electoral campaign, she will be able to count on an unexpected financial windfall after one of the biggest donations in the history of the environmental party: 1 million euros. As the Associated Press and the German regional newspaper explain Ostsee-Zeitung, Moritz Schmidt, the man behind this donation, hopes that a possible victory for the Greens in a few months could slow down the development of bitcoin, thanks to which … he nevertheless made a fortune.
The political party, which campaigns in particular for the reduction of greenhouse gases or for strong policies to push back the threat of climate change, has been discreet about its generous donor. “The donor made us understand that he sees these profits (thanks to bitcoin, editor’s note) as undeserved wealth, which he does not claim for himself, but that he wants to use socially for something that corresponds to his convictions, ”said the Greens in a statement on the subject.
“I think bitcoin should be banned”
This software developer living in Greifswald, in the northeast of the country, bought cryptocurrency for a few thousand dollars in 2011. Ten years later, the value of bitcoin has exploded and Schmidt, 39, has earned at least 2 million euros thanks to its initial investment. He claims to have become aware in 2017 of the energy consuming nature of bitcoin, whose “mining” requires a large consumption of electricity. “Energy consumption is built into the bitcoin system,” he explains, setting out a strong opinion on the future of cryptocurrency: “I think bitcoin should be banned”.
No passage in the German Greens’ electoral program mentions an outright ban on bitcoin in the country. But they want to make digital currencies “traceable”, which could impact their attractiveness. “I don’t think any regulations will change anything, unless they collapse the price of bitcoin to levels that make it uninteresting as an asset and unusable as a global currency,” slips however Moritz Schmidt, sweeping aside any desire to redeem a good conscience with this gift to the Greens: “If I had sought absolution, I would have turned to the Catholic Church”.
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