Women try to disrupt crypto’s ‘bro’ culture
The cryptocurrency market continues to gain in popularity, with a University of Chicago survey revealing last week that 13% of Americans invested in or traded crypto during the past year, another sign this digital currency mined through supercomputers is here to stay. But what of its reputation as an allboys club?
As crypto has dug roots into mainstream trading, the stereotype of the knowitall, mansplaining “bitcoin bro” has only intensified, becoming a way of life for some who extol the currency’s virtues in their Twitter feeds or YouTube rants. Young men dominated the blockchain when it was first developed in 2008, and data today suggests that they still do, continuing a long narrative of misogyny and underrepresentation for women in the finance and tech spheres.
But while some have criticized crypto’s “bro” culture as being sexist, women in the field say that the anonymity of crypto actually allows for more inclusion than other areas of finance and tech. Others say the crypto bro doesn’t represent the bulk of what crypto traders and miners actually look like, giving hope to women interested in the blockchain.
The investment industry has a history of appearing malecentric, with a longstanding
tradition of male dominance — and consequentially, overlooking women professionals — in the finance and tech sectors. According to a 2018 study by Harvard Business Review, women occupy fewer than 10% of all senior positions in venture capital and private equity. A similar study from Finances Online finds that women occupy fewer than 20% of leadership positions in tech — both of these figures falling behind the average U.S. company, where Catalyst estimates women hold 30% of senior positions.
The crypto world doesn’t fare much better, with Google Analytics estimating that women make up only 14% of engagement within the bitcoin community. While it’s a slight improvement from more traditional areas of finance, the space remains mostly male.
“You see a lot of men; you don’t see a lot of women,” said Karen Hsu, chief marketing officer of Appdome and cofounder of Blockchain by Women, a San Francisco meetup group for women interested in cryptocurrency.
Hsu said she believes that the sparse numbers of women involved in cryptocurrency can be attributed to security concerns. “Women tend to be more securityconscious,” she said. “There are hackers, it’s volatile, there’s higher risk than other investments, and a lot of women say that they’re concerned about those issues.”
Hsu said the problem could run deeper, “There’s a culture of women not being addressed and acknowledged in these spaces.”
That culture is prominent at many cryptocurrency networking events, which have earned a reputation for being overwhelmingly male. Bitcoin 2021, an annual conference for bitcoin enthusiasts, headlined five male speakers and just one woman this year. The gender ratio was an improvement from the North American Bitcoin Conference, which came under fire for headlining 85 male speakers and just three women in 2018.
The disparity was exacerbated by the fact that the afterparty for the 2018 conference was hosted at a Miami strip club, a venue choice that made some women who attended the conference “uncomfortable,” Bloomberg reported.
Frank Taylor, a data scientist based in North Berkeley, was invited to the afterparty, which he described as “tacky.”
“We didn’t even know it was a strip club until we got there,” he said, recalling that he and his colleagues felt so uncomfortable they left immediately after arriving. None of them even wanted to order drinks. “We were like, dude, this is a strip club. We talked to some other companies afterwards and all thought, ‘What the hell were they thinking?’ ”
Taylor, who has worked in tech for over 20 years, lamented that sexism is still pervasive in the finance and tech industries, especially since “pushing boundaries,” such as aggressive or extreme behavior, is common in maledominated fields. “For some of these guys, it is a man’s world.”
It only takes a glance at a crypto bro’s social media profile to see that mentality in action: sites like Twitter and Reddit abound with male crypto enthusiasts, who are known to use language that’s either extreme or seemingly intended for a male audience while discussing stocks and other investment assets.
Amid the throngs of male crypto enthusiasts, some women — like Girl Gone Crypto and CryptoWendyO — have taken to the same platforms to provide a female voice in the blockchain.
While these creators offer a different perspective, women influencers in the crypto community are still rare. For instance, Bitcoin.com’s list of top crypto influencers on Twitter comprises 34 men and one woman.
As a result, women in the field are often forced to adapt, a sad consequence of being outnumbered. Hsu, who has worked in tech for over 20 years, said she had grown used to working in a maledominated environment since beginning her career. At cryptocurrency conferences, events where she knows she will be outnumbered by men, she follows a protocol she created over the years to protect herself and tells many of her female mentees to follow suit. “Go early,” Hsu said. “Don’t go past nine or so, because weird stuff can happen. … At conferences, there’s alcohol, and that can (get) strange.”
Hsu recalls attending one conference where, as usual, she was grossly outnumbered by male attendees. “It was like clockwork,” she said. “It hit 8 p.m. I was one of five women in the room and the men came up to me and started asking me these weird questions.
“I wasn’t interested in talking about my life personally,” Hsu said. “I was there to network. And once they (started) to gesture or touch my arm or whatever, it’s time to go.”
Feeling excluded — or worse, unsafe — at these events can be part of why women in finance are behind the ranks of their male colleagues. The 2016 Harvard Business Review study that found that, when surveying U.S. financial firms, the lack of woman leadership could be attributed to long working hours and “a masculine and unwelcoming culture.”
Even when women are able to thrive in a masculine workplace, research suggests they may still be unable to reap the rewards of their accomplishments. A Stanford study found that even when women exhibit traits that are typically rewarded in their male colleagues, such as having a “takecharge attitude,” it won’t necessarily result in a higher evaluation by their managers.
This applies even when women are found to slightly outperform men in investment performance, a study by Fidelity reports. “Managers don’t weigh female brilliance as heavily as they do that of males,” said Nadra Nittle, who authored the policy brief for the Stanford study.
Despite overt cases of sexism, some female leaders in the field argue that cryptocurrency is far more inclusive than other sectors of the tech and finance world. Yingdan Liang, head of marketing at Mountain Viewbased cryptocurrency trading software Hummingbot, claims that the Bitcoin bro is more of a facade than indicative of what the entire industry is like.
“When (women) get started in crypto, the first thing they might see is those crypto tweets on Twitter,” Liang said, referring to content posted by crypto bros, who are often the most outspoken in online communities even if they are not the most experienced. “If you get deeper into crypto trading, you will not (see) those people.”
Liang also doesn’t believe that maledominance is a cryptospecific problem: “Most industries today are maledominated,” she said. A study by Catalyst found that 26 of the 30 highestpaying professions in the U.S. are dominated by men.
Despite being outnumbered, Liang noted that she has never felt uncomfortable in her cryptocurrency groups because of her gender. And while she acknowledges there are issues within the industry, she thinks there’s an aspect of inclusivity in the blockchain, since many members in the community choose not to disclose their identities, let alone their sex. “No one cares about your gender,” said Liang, who believes that with accessible education and female role models, the blockchain could become more genderequal in the future.
Even Satoshi Nakamoto, who developed bitcoin in 2008, is among the gender anonymous, leading some to speculate that Nakamoto is female. For some, the #SatoshiIsFemale movement is ridiculed. For others, particularly women who are trying to break into the field, the theory is seen as a glimmer of hope.