Coining a new gender reality

DIGITAL CURRENCY WORLD SLOWLY OPENS TO WOMEN

Sin Hong Kong omething new is happening in the world of cryptocurrencies. The roughly US$460 billion digital currency world, spawned eight years ago from the almost exclusively male domain of bitcoin, is starting to open to women. Four out of 30 of the largest initial coin offerings this year through October had female cofounders, double the number of women leading the 30 technology companies with the largest international public offerings worldwide. Two of the female-led ICOs were among the biggest so far.

Women are now more visible as speakers at crypto conferences. And Coinbase Inc., one of the largest U.S. digital currency exchanges, said 46 per cent of its new hires this year are women or are ethnically diverse.

Even if the viability of most blockchain projects remains to be seen, the experiences of pioneering women indicate that the nascent industry is moving toward a more inclusive culture and expanding its talent base as it marches down a path toward the mainstream — steps that in other fields have given a boost to innovation and financial performance.

“We have an opportunity to rebuild the financial system,” said Galia Benartzi, co-founder of Bancor, which raised US$150 million in June. “Are we going to do it with all guys again?”

Famous women have popped up in the blockchain world — such as Blythe Masters, the former JPMorgan Chase & Co. banker, who quit her job to run Digital Asset Holdings. Another is Elizabeth Stark, who taught at Yale and Stanford universities before co-founding Lightning Labs, which is testing a technology to speed up cryptocurrency transactions.

Others are building their first careers in the industry, such as Maxine Ryan, a half-Chinese, half-Australian 25-year-old who dropped out of university to launch Bitspark in Hong Kong, where she was born. Its ICO last month raised US$1.4 million.

“It’s still a handful, even though it’s growing,” said Ryan, about the presence of women in the blockchain world.

That’s a contrast from the early days. Nathaniel Popper’s 2015 book Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money, which covers bitcoin’s history through early 2014, mentions no women by name directly involved in the virtual currency. In a survey of bitcoin users conducted by CoinDesk Inc. in 2015, more than 90 per cent of nearly 4,000 respondents were male.

There’s scant data on the diversity of crypto companies. Among 67 companies in the portfolio of Digital Currency Group Inc. — a company that invests in blockchain technology — 17 per cent of employees were female, while a third had no women, according to a March 2016 blog post by DCG’s director of development Meltem Demirors. The figure is comparable to the percentage between a new share sale and crowdfunding — which has raised US$3.8 billion for startups so far, according to CoinDesk data.

Kathleen Breitman, the San Francisco-based co-founder behind Tezos, which made news for infighting after a US$232 million ICO in July, said things are improving for women as the industry grows and becomes more professional.

Tezos is now the target of classaction lawsuits accusing it of violating U.S. securities laws and questioning the viability of its project.

“I think things are much better than they were before,” said Breitman, who a year ago met with a New York hedge fund in lieu of her male co-founder and husband, only to have them remark that they were “really surprised” she was smart. The improvement now is due “to more sophisticated actors entering the space across development and investment. There are also a lot of women who