Mar 8, 20216 min read

Celebrating Women’s Liberty In Crypto Industry

With the advent of the industrial and technological revolution, there is a huge impact on the liberty of women in human society, which in turn helped women to be able to give voice and to connect to the whole world. Blockchain and Crypto Industry is one such revolutionary field of technology.

Diversity and the pursuit to achieve comes from acceptance and respect. Women had to fight for both. We have a diversity of backgrounds, opinions, and ideas. A variety of factors are responsible for a woman to be successful, be it self-confidence, assurance; or the support of family and friends. In the past few years, women have set classic examples of positions, power of influence; protesting for voting rights in the mid-19th century, marching with cigarettes implying ‘Torches of Freedom‘ from societal barriers.

WOMEN IN BLOCKCHAIN

Blockchain is transforming many industries, right from finance, healthcare, governance, and many. The same is happening with the demographics of the tech industries. Women are passionate enough to bring changes and explore decentralized technology. Bitcoin has intrigued many women, for it is a symbol of financial freedom to them. Women get the independence to empower themselves in ways to unleash them from financial captivity, lack of opportunities. The more they invest, the more they become financially independent. This fuels confidence, where they embark on changing the narrative.

The executive director of Federal Bank, Shalini Warrier says,

You have gotta develop your own self-confidence. All these phobias are in your own minds, the glass ceiling is purely in our minds. Source: Hyperledger

Sosu Alex, Blockchain Technical Architect of Tata Consultancy Services(TCS) started out as a technical lead in the campus program of Blockchain, leading a team of developers. She is an architect now, working on Ethereum. She says,

An important element is you have to ask for what you want. Sometimes the society is biased in its psyche. It’s you who can actually bring the change, but you have to go out and put yourself out there. Source: Hyperledger

UNPARALLEL CONTRIBUTION

Women account for the marginalized demography in financial industries. However, nothing deters them to bring about changes and making significant milestones in the ways technical industries work. They have successfully shaped a different narrative in the leadership positions. Dr. Jane Thomason, Founder of Supernova Data, says,

Find something that you’re passionate about and follow the pathway, don’t be constrained by social and institutional barriers. Don’t look for the challenges, look for the opportunities.

Darshita Gillies, Founder, and CEO of Maanch, started the platform in 2018. She launched the platform with a motive to mobilize money.

Founder of Blockchain African Ladies (BAL), Ojuederie Doris stumbled into cryptocurrencies in 2018. She started investing in cryptocurrencies from a very young age. Doris strived to eradicate the shady picture of Bitcoin which was synonymous with scams. She started Crypto Lioness, a platform she uses to educate women about crypto trading.

To celebrate powerful women in science and technology, Bryana‘s Enjin team launched an online game Azure Mystery in collaboration with Microsoft. The players will learn about female scientists.

PARTICIPATION OF WOMEN

Since 2018, many exchanges are finding an increased percentage of women investors and participation of women in technical and academic institutions. There is no comparison to women’s competency. According to Grayscale, 49.8% of women predicted that Bitcoin’s limited circulating supply would lead to its price growth in the future.

Source : Grayscale

On explaining the cause behind the growing interest in digital money, Blockchain entrepreneur Nisa Amolis said:

Women can get more income through trading, investing, and virtual spending of Bitcoin. And the token economy can democratize access to capital through, for instance, security token offerings. Source: consulting24.co

Source: Grayscale

On the active participation of women in blockchain, OKCoin’s Hong Fang said:

We are seeing more female startup founders and thought leaders enter crypto. Naturally, this has had a positive impact on attracting more female users to crypto platforms. Source: cointelegraph

EXAMPLES SET BY THE WOMEN

Women administer as analysts, developers, and company leaders. The cohorts, traditionally dominated by men. Statistics show that blockchain companies founded by women are equally competent with those run by men.

THE LEADERS

In leading the blockchain division of companies, women have set intriguing benchmarks.

Known for her fierce personality, Blythe Masters lead the fintech company, Digital Asset Holdings from 2015-2018.
Marie Wieck, has been working for IBM for more than 20 years.
Amber Baldet, former executive director and blockchain program lead for JPMorgan Chase; left the firm to pursue her own venture, Clovyr, a decentralized ecosystem of application and services under the domain of blockchain.
Kaitlin Breitman co-founder of Tezos, successfully raised a whopping $232 million in its initial coin offering.
Crypto exchanges, Bancor, co-founded by Galia Benartzi and Binance have 40% to 50% of female employees.
Huobi appointed Ciara Sun as its first female executive.
The founder of Lightning Network protocol, Elizabeth Stark, was successful in its execution. She has penned her journey in her medium article, where she expresses her avid intrigue for the crypto space.

THE WRITERS

The ones holding keys of knowledge on Blockchain and cryptocurrencies must receive genuine applause. Female journalists and editors of crypto columns Laura Shin, Lily Katz, Kristina Lucrezia Corner, and many more have a strong Twitter fanbase and are noted influencers.

DISREGARDING NAYSAYERS

In 2018, Hope Liu received $20 million in funding for her startup, Eximchain, a public and scalable blockchain that ensures privacy for businesses. She received a critical remark by a prominent man that she would “never be able to make it.’ The Eximchain network has concluded its development in the fall of 2020 due to the depletion of funding.

THE LIBERTY OF FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE

Blockchain is a lucrative opportunity to gain financial independence. Tricia Martinez, of Uganda, launched the Wala blockchain platform, allowing women to transfer small amounts of money. Women’s Annex, launched by Afghanistan’s Roya Mahboob and Fereshteh Forough, offered women the opportunity to write monetized blogs, thereby earning cryptocurrency. Presently both are actively engaged in educating women, through Digital Citizen Fund and Code To Inspire.

On the benefits of revolution in the digital economy for women, Kristin Boggiano, a co-founder and President of CrossTower, says:

It is bringing financial inclusion and economic empowerment to females globally, which is having a strong impact on reducing poverty, increasing education and overall household nutrition for families.

THE COMMUNITY

Females often encourage other women to participate, celebrate and highlight the women that are already leading in this space, inspiring others to join. Contributing to gender equality in the blockchain industry, Baroness Michelle Mone, launched her own cryptocurrency in 2018 to increase women’s interest in investing in the technology.

VP of Engineering at SDF, Karen, a huge skeptic of Crypto ended up with contentment, talking with Stellar Development Foundation (SDF). She says:

I felt a little bit intimidated through the process to be quite honest. I knew nothing about crypto. But everyone made me feel very comfortable about my background and lack of experience. It wasn’t a mitigating factor. There was no shade thrown. In fact, people were telling me, “Yes, we’re looking for people like you — who have this other domain of experience that’s more standard to financial engineering and technology and can bring something new to the conversation Source: Stellar Development Foundation

For effective participation of women, Manana Samuseva, founder of the Women in Crypto community, said:

I believe that it is necessary to implement a number of projects for more effective entry of women entrepreneurs into the sphere of blockchain and cryptocurrency. Source: cointelegraph

‘Unless you do something for yourself, no one else will do it for you.‘ Women believe in working harder, becoming diligent decision-makers in the industry.

While talking about technology being a tool to help all kinds of communities in all countries, Marta, Software Engineer on Stellar Core says:

This is very applicable to blockchain as well. Blockchain has global impact across different regions. It’s important to have a group of people representative of those regions contribute their unique perspectives and experiences on these topics so we can reach the best solution.

Source: cryptonewsreview

COLLECTIVE THINKING FOR THE GOOD OF THE SOCIETY

Gender is not the only concern in the participation of the blockchain industry, as Arwen Smit, founder of blockchain startups Dovu and MintBit, believes that ‘Satoshi Nakamoto could be a woman.’

Arwen believes on both sexes being valuable. She further says:

If we believe that an information is absolutely essential to how society functions nowadays, what is essential is that the people building this technology, the people deploying this technology, and the people auditing this technology, the people putting balances on this new technology is a diverse group of people. Source: cointelegraph

RISK IS CONFIDENCE

Reward rarely comes without risk; be it a financial reward or a personal reward. In 2018’s Rich Thinking reports, women prefer to invest their time in things that make the world a better place to live in. They strongly support gender equality and in doing good for society.

Women’s trust in cryptocurrencies has seen a surge. They seem to find their best investments in multiples areas. The data below lists the smart tips on investing:

Source: barbarastewart

It is likely a myth that risk is the cause behind keeping women away from Bitcoin. By taking risks, the trait of being smart inherently comes and one masters the art to take calculated risks.

As Mme. Tondu-Mélique suggests:

Sometimes we make changes through tiny steps and sometimes through big leaps. Ultimately, taking risk is about having confidence in yourself, having confidence in others, and having confidence in the future. Source: barbarastewart

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