Crypto struggles with sexism just as the industry becomes an election issue

When Amanda Wick made the jump from government to crypto, she was surprised by how few women spoke at crypto conferences.

“Crypto, pardon the pun, loves a token,” Wick told DL News. “And there were like five women that you would see over and over and over.”

So, after her 2020 move from federal prosecutor to head of legal at Chainalysis, she and the crypto data firm organised a speaker series to highlight women in crypto.

“Something about tech, and especially crypto and blockchain, doesn’t surface the women in the industry as much as the men,” Wick said.

By most measures, Wick’s right.

Sexism problem

Like Wall Street and Silicon Valley, the crypto industry has a sexism problem.

The 17 richest crypto billionaires are all men, according to a recent tally from Forbes.

Crypto Twitter is rife with toxic posts about women.

A number of people have used profane and misogynistic terms on X to describe Senator Elizabeth Warren, a longtime crypto critic. Someone even created a memecoin called WHOREN in an apparent reference to the senator.

And this week Bitcoin 2024, a leading industry conference, is featuring British entertainer Russell Brand as a speaker who “challenges mainstream narratives.”

Four women have accused him of sexual offences, including rape. Brand, who is being investigated by UK police, has denied the allegations.

This is not a good look for an industry on the cusp of mainstream acceptance.

With Bitcoin, and on Tuesday, Ethereum ETFs, offered up to ordinary investors, crypto has defied the odds to become a bona fide asset class.

Wall Street giants such as BlackRock, Fidelity, Franklin Templeton, and Ark Invest have become serious players in crypto. BlackRock’s ETF alone has attracted $19 billion in investments.

Election issue

At the same time, digital assets and blockchain technology have become hot topics in the US presidential election.

Former President Donald Trump, the Republican Party nominee, will address Bitcoin 2024 on Saturday in Nashville. Earlier this year, he went all in on crypto and won the support of Gemini co-founders Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, Kraken Chairman Jesse Powell and other industry leaders.

On Tuesday, David Bailey, the head of Bitcoin Magazine and one of the confab’s organisers, tweeted that he was in talks with the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee, to also speak in Nashville this week.

(On Wednesday, Bailey tweeted that Harris will not be appearing at the conference.)

Harris’ sudden campaign, triggered on Sunday when President Joe Biden withdrew from the race, will put gender equality issues at the heart of the 2024 election.

This will test the industry’s willingness to rebalance its bro-heavy culture in favour of inclusion.

Lewd party

Wick, for one, has set out to do something to help the market she loves. She eventually left Chainalysis, and, in 2022, founded the Association for Women in Cryptocurrency, a nonprofit that advocates for women in web3.

In a recent report, her organisation found that 82% of approximately 400 women surveyed believe the industry is not free from harassment.

Wick has seen some small measures of progress, like when Zodia Custody, a London firm, dropped its partner Copper after it hosted a lewdly-themed party during an industry conference in March.

“It was in really bad taste,” said Wick.

Neel Somani, the founder of blockchain Eclipse, left the company after sexual misconduct allegations circulated on X and investors urged him to leave.

Boys clubs

Crypto’s problem, of course, has plenty of antecedents.

The boys club vibe of Wall Street is so axiomatic it’s a pop culture cliché — think of movies such as “Boiler Room” and “The Wolf of Wall Street,” which was based on a true story.

More recently, Silicon Valley had its own reckoning.

In 2015, Ellen Pao, a venture capitalist, sued Kleiner Perkins, one of the most prestigious and powerful VC firms in the world, for gender discrimination.

She lost the case, but is still widely considered to have inspired the #MeToo movement in tech, which put pressure on giants such as Google as well as startups.

Reputational risk

While bro culture remains a fixture, it’s become a reputational risk for firms keen on burnishing a responsible corporate image.

In the UK, listed companies must report information on representation of women on their boards and management teams to the Financial Conduct Authority.

UK companies of over 250 employees must report pay gap data to the government.

In the US, around 55% of companies in the Russell 5000 voluntarily send diversity data to the federal government. And Nasdaq requires companies listing on its exchange to reveal the diversity of their boards.

It’s hard to define “crypto culture” because it’s not monolithic.

But memecoins tell the tale. In addition to the WHOREN token, Andrew Tate, an influencer and self-described misogynist charged by Romanian authorities with rape, launched his own memecoin called “DADDY.”

But women are speaking out. In May, some railed on X against the industry’s culture of misogyny.

“We are in an industry that famously doesn’t have many women, but does have incels,” one user wrote in a post.

It would be a mistake, of course, to assume that as crypto becomes part of conventional finance, it will become friendlier to women.

‘It’s a club and we’re not invited to it.’

—  Caitlin Long, Custodia

Custodia Bank founder and CEO Caitlin Long told DL News she’s come up against a sexist establishment of banks and regulators.

Long has been fighting to get an account with the Federal Reserve, features of the system that make business more efficient and bring prestige.

“If you look at the data, it’s stunning how few banks in the US are owned by anyone other than white men…” Long said.

“Literally, it’s a club and we’re not invited to it.”

‘Crypto bros committing crimes’

Still, Wick, the nonprofit founder, said she has seen changes.

That includes what she called a “maturation” in discussions around the topic of sexism among crypto CEOs as well as inside trade organisations like the Crypto Council for Innovation.

Maggie Love, a tech and web3 veteran who has worked at IBM and with Consensys, has also seen greater corporate interest in her business SheFi, which convenes short courses for women and non-binary folks on crypto.

Her courses include introductions to stablecoins, lending, and staking, and Love even counts asset management giant Fidelity Investments, whose CEO Abigail Johnson is a woman, among her clients.

Fidelity “very much cares about whether their female employees are up to speed on all this,” Love said.

More scrutiny on safer workplaces will be good for men also, Wick added.

Her report also found that 48% of the approximately 100 men in crypto it surveyed believed that the industry was not free from harassment.

And, she argues, it will also be better for the industry writ large.

She pointed to FTX as an example of what happens when a boys club manages a crypto company responsible for billions of dollars in customer assets.

“When you exclude a bunch of people who are historically the ones that identify, manage, and surface risk,” Wick said, “you get a room full of crypto bros committing crimes.”

Updated on July 24 with David Bailey’s tweet that Kamala Harris will not speak at the Bitcoin 2024 conference this week.

Ben Weiss is DL News’ Dubai-based correspondent. Reach out to him at bweiss@dlnews.com. Joanna Wright is DL News’ regulatory correspondent. Contact her at joanna@dlnews.com.