Top 8 Women in Cryptocurrency & Blockchain - Bring on the Revolution!

It's 2018, and thanks to cryptocurrencies and the blockchain we stand on the brink of a sea-change in global economics. This revolution has the potential to sweep away traditional power-bases and institutions and pave the way for genuine diversity and people power, providing unprecedented access to technology, data, and control regardless of location, status or identity.

Why then do we continue to see women and other minorities underrepresented at every level?

Perhaps it should come as no surprise when we remember that cryptocurrencies are fundamentally tech innovation companies. During the previous couple of years, the technology industry has spawned some of the worst high-profile examples of institutional sexism - with cases of bullying, discrimination and toxic organizational cultures coexisting alongside some of the most innovative products and ambitious mission statements on the planet. Frankly, if Silicon Valley regards itself as the future, we're in big trouble.

So we're looking at the intersection of both the nerdiest of tech and the heavyweight presence of the finance industry… Also not known to be a hotbed of feminist liberalism. (And anyone who argues that lack of a pay-rise or a bit of workplace 'banter' is irrelevant in the light of the exposure of recent criminal activities in the entertainment industry and elsewhere, is simply failing to understand how such abuses of power originate and get normalized).

As long as the tech industry, in general, is perceived to be somewhere that women will face systematic casual abuse in the workplace, or simply have diminished earning potential or career opportunities, then we shouldn't be surprised if many of the best and the brightest choose to go elsewhere. And let's remember that the earliest waves of cryptocurrency consumer adoption and knowledge-sharing happened across the least regulated channels of online communications, such as Reddit and 4Chan - again, spaces which are intensely gender-biased and appeal to a narrow subculture of those obsessed with Lambo memes and Pepe the Frog. Not exactly embracing inclusivity, shall we say.

Crypto in the real world

But even going beyond the politics to looking at the practicalities of the cryptocurrency marketplace, it's obvious that failing to engage with the voices of women is going to seriously obstruct future mass adoption of blockchain-based products and technologies.

Women buy 70-80% of the world's products and act as the purchasing gateways for multiple institutions across different categories. If cryptocurrencies are ever to cross effectively into use as a medium of exchange rather than just a store of value - which is surely the objective of the industry long-term - then it's incredibly short-sighted to ignore the female perspective.

However, in December 2017 Forbes quoted data that only 5%-7% of cryptocurrency users are women - and that means at best 5%-7% of the $85 billion wealth creation from Bitcoin in 2017 benefited women as a result. Far from leveling the playing field and empowering underrepresented groups in the way that it could, so far the benefits of crypto are actually deepening existing inequalities.

Thank goodness the backlash has started, even though it's yet far from equally distributed. The Blockstack Summit in 2017 specifically reserved a quota of ticket allocation for women and other underrepresented groups, in an effort to amplify the voices which were going unheard, and create space for participants to speak up without feeling themselves to be in a minority. Linda Xie, the co-founder of Scalar Capital, described it as 'one of the only crypto events I attended where I actually had to wait for the women's restroom'!

ICOs too present increased opportunities for female engagement in the space, given that they are less dependent on the traditionally male-dominated careers related to coding and instead stand or fall on their whitepapers - in other words, effective communications, a professional realm where women have greater penetration. And stepping outside that closed (and yet again male-dominated) culture of VC funding to the egalitarian potential of crowdsourcing, ICOs have the scope to democratize access to startup capital for founders from every demographic.

Women to watch

So today let's take a quick look at some of the women who are really making a difference in the crypto world because there are plenty of them. With a few notable exceptions, they're doing it too quietly, compared with the airtime and exposure that their male counterparts are gaining in the press.

Let's change that right here, right now, by rounding up a few female movers and shakers in the space to keep an eye out for in 2018. Some of these you may not have heard of yet… But you will:

Grassroots change

Indeed, education is where change has got to start. Whilst valuable initiatives such as Girls in Tech can start to bridge the gap for women to enter the highly male-dominated world of coding, it's vital that more generally financial literacy is heightened for all young people.

Investing has been the largest wealth generation tool for decades worldwide, so it's essential that women are equal players in this system. A lack of financial literacy and no social empowerment to invest for those in developing markets is leading women to miss out on opportunities such as cryptocurrency. The only way to fix this is to work financial literacy and investment training into global education programmes, so all young people will be more able to advance their financial positions in a rapidly changing world.

Sadly our educational institutions in the 'developed' world have always failed badly at this area. Watching my own daughters struggling with schoolwork covering critical life-skills like trigonometry, I can't help thinking how much more useful it'd be for them to be learning to understand trading, risk, and even compound interest… Whatever their future holds for their generation, a fundamental understanding of triangles probably won't help them as much as understanding how to value and manage and make their most of the assets they acquire.

But in a world where learning is a click away for most of us, the traditional curriculums surely become less and less important, and so in parallel will the institutions which gate-keep such knowledge. I look forward to the next generation of men and women in cryptocurrency, who are the self-taught pioneers of a new age and will build the new economy to fit a world we can't begin to imagine. I believe, or at the very least sincerely hope, we won't be looking around wondering where the women are.