The new battle of the sexes (with cryptocurrencies)

PALO ALTO, Calif. - When, last month, a cryptocurrency startup that had promised to revolutionize the fruit and vegetable industry closed operations, a single word was published on its website: "Pene."

Recently, to promote among its investors their initial offer of coins (ICO, for its acronym in English), the virtual coin company DateCoin published on Facebook an ad in which appeared a woman in a reclined bathing suit and, on her body , the phrase: "Touch my ICO".

At the conclusion of the North American Bitcoin Conference in January, which featured 84 male and 3 female speakers, the official party to close the conference was held at a Miami striptease venue. A group of women investors said they had made the decision to boycott the conference in the future.

Virtual currencies and the chain of blocks (the digital ledger that forms the basis of cryptocurrencies) were meant to be more democratic forces and create greater equality, driven by a utopian exuberance. However, women who have tried to participate in the gold rush have come across a tremendous division of gender. Worse yet: some claim that culture is getting worse because male dominance has been exacerbated by a new community of wealthy crypto-speculators known as the Blockchain Bros.

So this world that is just forming is already in danger of being like the rest of the technology industry, in which women represent a clear minority. Some studies calculate that the proportion of female investors in the block chain is only between four and six percent. This imbalance matters because, in general, at the dawn of an industry it is when fortunes are amassed and the first big beneficiaries decide later on who to invest and what to build. For that reason, this stage has many consequences.

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Some of the first investors and entrepreneurs have begun to warn about this fact and to take measures to counter-attack.

"Girls, consider investing in the crypto world," Alexia Bonatsos, an investor in venture capital, wrote on Twitter. "If they do not, men are going to monopolize all the profits ... for a change".

Some prominent women in the crypt have started to organize events and make invitations to groups and conferences to attract other women to the industry. Bonatsos was a speaker at one of those events this month in San Francisco. For its part, Jalak Jobanputra, founder of the emerging investment company Future Perfect Ventures, met this month with other developers of block chains in New York to discuss this problem. After their talks, they announced that they had decided to form a group of support for diversity in the block chain sector called Collective Future, in addition to creating a document to present it to the crypto companies and request their signature as an expression of their commitment to diversity.

"The initial period determines how the culture of an industry will be and who will be involved in the decision-making," said Jobanputra. And he gave as an example to venture capital investors who provided funding for eBay and Amazon and where they channeled their financing afterwards.

Arianna Simpson, one of the first investors in cryptocurrencies, explained that the increased interest in virtual currencies among males who are absolute novices should raise awareness among women that it does not take a great deal of experience or a doctorate to succeed in that ecosystem.

"Women always ask themselves if they have the necessary skills," he said. "But just look at what kind of clowns are around here."

The response to specific events has been encouraging, according to some women. Brit Morin, a businesswoman from Silicon Valley, recently hosted a meeting on the block chain for women and the tickets sold out in an hour. He changed to a place with greater capacity and the 500 places sold out again, so he decided to broadcast the event live. That night, 16,000 spectators joined the broadcast.

"We have the opportunity to rebuild the financial systems," Morin said. "Women want to be part of this phenomenon."

The resistance arose because of the growing indignation at the lack of diversity in virtual currencies, emphasized by sexist incidents such as the announcement of DateCoin on Facebook and the publication of Prodeum, the emerging block company for the sale of fruit. None of these companies responded to requests for statements when contacted.

In some events aimed at women in the crypt, frustration is turning into anger and sadness. Recently, some fifty young people interested in cryptocurrencies met one night at the Woman's Club in Palo Alto. Some of them were engineering students at nearby Stanford University.

They drank wine and shared their experiences. Some had been confused with models, others had made unseemly proposals during job interviews and many men did not even believe they were engineers.

Catheryne Nicholson, executive director of BlockCypher, a company that offers infrastructure for blockchain applications, explained to some of the younger women why the gender situation has worsened.

"Now there is a lot of money involved and men think: 'Oh, I'm very important, I represent a large percentage of income,'" he said. "They have become a little more smug."

Other women complained that the culture of the block chain has been getting tired little by little. Jay Graber, a developer of Zcash, a new cryptocurrency designed for systems that improve privacy, said he had begun to take an interest in the blockchain after participating in Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in 2011 because he considered this technology a capable tool to detract from the power of the big central banks. Now she is not so sure anymore.

"I never felt insecure before entering this space," Graber lamented. "But I already realized that there is nobody like me. It is very disappointing not to find anyone who has anything in common with you. "