Women bust into world of bitcoin
Formerly male-dominated domain of cryptocurrencies is starting to change
The roughly US$460 billion ($656b) digital currency world, born 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 had female cofounders, and two of their ICOs were among the largest so far.
Women are now more visible as speakers at crypto conferences.
And Coinbase, one of the largest US digital currency exchanges, said 46 per cent of its new hires this year were women or ethnically diverse.
Even if the viability of most blockchain projects remains to be seen, the experiences of pioneering women indicate the nascent industry is moving to a more inclusive culture and expanding its talent base as it marches towards the mainstream — steps that in other fields have boosted 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, 25, who dropped out of university to launch Bitspark in Hong Kong, where she was born. Its ICO last month raised US$1.4m.
“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 directly involved in the virtual currency by name.
In a survey of bitcoin users conducted by CoinDesk in 2015, more than 90 per cent of nearly 4000 respondents were male.
There’s scant data on the diversity of crypto companies.
Among 67 companies in the portfolio of Digital Currency Group — 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 of venture-funded companies with female founders around the world, according to Crunchbase data.
Demirors says women don’t always get the credit they deserve: she recalls being referred to as a “random marketing chick” earlier in her career and just last month had a man try to explain to her how crypto technology works at an event in Hong Kong where she delivered the opening remarks.
“I truly believe a lot of the women are the ones who are actually doing a lot of the hard operational, strategic work,” Demirors said.
The crypto world has come under unprecedented scrutiny this year, with investment in bitcoin going mainstream after a roughly 1600 per cent surge in price. The boom has spawned the initial coin offering — a cross between a new share sale and crowdfunding — which has raised US$3.8b for startups so far, according to CoinDesk data.
Kathleen Breitman, the San Francisco-based co-founder of Tezos, which made news for infighting after a US$232m ICO in July, said things were improving for women as the industry grows and becomes more professional. Tezos is now the target of class-action lawsuits accusing it of violating US 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 a New York hedge fund in lieu of her male co-founder and husband, only to have those attending remark they were “really surprised” she was smart. Breitman has organised a blockchain group in San Francisco called “Attack of the 51 Per Cent”, a play on the notion that anyone who controls more than half of bitcoin’s computing power can take over the blockchain.
A group called CryptoFriends plans a blockchain conference with all female speakers, called New Girls on the Block, in Tel Aviv in May 2018. Still, there’s a long way to go. CoinDesk, an influential cryptocurrency media company, recently compiled a list for a vote on the most influential people in blockchain, which includes outsiders who have made an impact such as socialite Paris Hilton and JPMorgan chief Jamie Dimon. A fifth of the 153 identifiable candidates were women.
The crypto world’s gender imbalance echoes that in Silicon Valley.
The bitcoin community started as casual networks with informal roles across social circles, email threads and internet forums, making it harder for outsiders to join.
There are also fewer female coders and engineers in the industry.
Benartzi, the Bancor co-founder, said a shortage of female programmers was no excuse not to have women involved in blockchain businesses.
Bancor has a female vice-president for engineering.
“Both women and men should be extremely excited about this,” said Benartzi, who splits her time between Tel Aviv, California and Switzerland.
“Even if you can’t create 50-50 diversity in your developer teams, having women in leadership positions in your company is absolutely doable and absolutely essential.”
The price of Bancor’s token has slipped since its debut amid scepticism over the usefulness of its technology, whose application aims to facilitate trading in other digital coins.
The crypto community’s gender politics made news in October when the CoinAgenda conference in Las Vegas invited Gurbaksh Chahal, a tech executive who founded a blockchain marketing company called Lyndian, to speak — despite a domestic violence conviction. Michael Terpin, CoinAgenda’s managing director, said he didn’t think the misdemeanour conviction “merited a lifetime ban” from speaking.
Women such as Breitman still report that their appearance and speaking styles are heavily scrutinised and criticised in online forums.
Ryan said she’s often addressed as Mr Max or Mr Ryan in emails, and is received with surprise when she meets people in the tech sector.