The Prevailing Importance of Women in the Age of Crypto
By: Moriah Khalili
Tags: Women In Tech, Bitcoin, Women, Cryptocurrency

The era of the cryptocurrency industry has clearly demonstrated an expeditious advancement. The implementation of this innovative form of financial interaction entails a completely transformed method of business transaction.

Women in Tech

Emily Bett Rickards aka Felicity Smoak in Arrow, DC & The CW Television Network

As such a globally impactful field takes widespread coverage, it is imperative to focus on the emphasis of the leaders and shapers of the industry, who bring the sector to reach greater heights. In order to maintain this ongoing success in a long-term and sustainable manner, fostering and initiating processes to integrate women into the crypto and blockchain field is vital.

Societal tech implementation has taken full gear over the past decade, overall linking to an increasingly substantial effort to incorporate the female sector to this movement. Societal daily happenings are largely impacted by the shift of business and social engagement onto a technological foundation. Because of such a drastic transition, the importance of having women part of this adaptation has been perceived as extremely crucial. Consequently, various initiatives have been catered to target this social importance.

Over time, there is a clear rise of women specifically in the tech sector: women hold 20% of tech jobs and 17.7% of startups have had a female founder. This figure will undoubtedly escalate over time, as the persistent initiative to integrate women in the tech industry is acknowledged on a wider scale. However, the surprising figures of women’s affiliation in the crypto-industry are on a noticeable low. Currently 5% of women are engaged in the crypto sector; such contributions include female developers, founders, and investors. In contrast, when viewing the percentage of male community engagement in the crypto field, 95% is dominated by men. This brings us to highlight the true state of exigency to change this current social standing.

The Virtues of Women in Crypto

Catheryne Nicholson — BlockCypher

Being an active player in the crypto industry entails upholding certain virtues. For, if one highly values the foundations that bolster the spread of cryptocurrency, it is not restricted within the framework of business.

An active player in this domain attributes importance to individual freedoms, to the opportunity and possibilities of the individual.

A decentralized financial transaction system, such as that within the crypto, entails believing in the capabilities of the individual to contribute to a greater good and to the advancement of values that leave positive externalities on society and on productivity levels. Therefore, this is not limited to a business perspective, but rather the consideration of the various people who can play a key role in the decentralization of common business practice and reshape it in the most innovative nature. By understanding the value of innovation in crypto and the possibilities it opens to society, an individual who is well-versed in this sector understands the fact that this includes the inclusion of women into this industry in order to maintain continuous development and exceptional success.

Women in the Blockchain

Since the emergence of this industry and the commencement of its prevailing impact, a number of women have been playing key roles in developing its global influence. These women have been substantial contributors to the expansion of the field and explicitly demonstrate the fact that as the crypto field grows over time, women are needed to maintain the sustainable outcomes that will leave promising externalities on society. Included in this article are ten such women who exemplify the true appreciable roles they have been playing into further progressing the scope of the blockchain sector.

Top 10 Influential Women Leaders Within the Crypto Industry

Kathleen Breitman @breitwoman: Breitman is currently a Co-Founder of Tezos, an open-source decentralized blockchain platform that operates under a self-upgrading and governance model for smart contracts. This means that various stakeholders vote on alterations to the specific protocol, which contributes to an overall social consensus on the particular proposals. This powerful company has raised $232 million up to date.

2. Catheryne Nicholson @Catheryne_N: A Mimblewimble and Grin proponent, Nicholson is the CEO and Co-Founder of BlockCypher, an industry-leading blockchain and web services company. BlockCypher allows corporations to build blockchain applications in a facilitated manner. An engineer and entrepreneur, Nicholson is a rich background in product marketing as well as softwareproduct management.

3. Arianna Simpson @AriannaSimpson: Managing partner at Autonomous Partners, a cryptocurrency venture capital fund. Before the fund establishment, Simpson worked at BitGo, a BitCoin security platform that provides a multi-user BitCoin wallet, overall providing clients with financial services and security solutions.

4. Elizabeth Stark @starkness ‏: CEO of Lightning Labs, which provides a more scalable blockchain to make any transaction cheap and quick. This decentralized protocol streamlines the number of nodes involved in individual transactions. As a result, individual transactions are performed at a quicker pace.

5. Katherine Wu @katherineykwu ‏: Manager of Business Development and Community Management for Messari, which is a NYC-based crypto startup. Messari promotes transparency and smarter decision-making in the crypto ecosystem through data gathering into an organized and structured database.

6. Neha Narula @neha ‏: Director of the Digital Currency Initiative at the MIT Media Lab. MIT Media Lab has launched the MIT Digital Currency Initiative, the goal of which is to bring together highly qualified individuals to conduct the proper research in order to uphold the development of digital currency and blockchain technology. Formerly a software engineer at Google, Narula has completed her PhD in computer science at MIT and has constructed various scalable databases and secure software systems.

7. Elaine Shi @ElaineRShi ‏: Co-Founder and Chief Scientist at Thunder Token, a blockchain protocol that performs high throughput and confirms transactions in seconds. Elaine has published the first peer-reviewed papers specifically on the BitCoin and decentralized smart contracts. Elaine is currently a professor at Cornell University.

8. Mona El Isa @Mona_El_Isa: Founder of Melonport, a Melon (blockchain) protocol for digital asset management software that is constructed on the Ethereum platform. El Isa has been distinguished for winning the “Hottest Blockchain/Crypto Startup Founder” at the Europas, which awards the newest, innovative European startups.

Maja Vujinovic

9. Maja Vujinovic: CEO of OGroup, an influential company predominantly focusing on the merge between open protocols and legacy systems. Maja has formerly taken on the role of Chief Innovation Officer of Emerging Tech & Future of Work at GE Digital and has taken roles relating to digital business transformation and overall driving innovation.

10. Sandra Ro @srolondon: CEO of Global Blockchain Business Council, a top blockchain technology trade association, merging global innovative organizations and business leaders and global regulators to enhance the understanding of blockchain. Sandra has formerly engaged in executing the digital assets and blockchain technology initiatives as the Executive Director of Digitization at CME Group