Women Prove They Belong in the Crypto World
Long gone are the days when women played a back-seat role on Wall-Street, or in investments as a whole. Since 2009, the birth of Bitcoin has made financial investment more accessible, not just for the few, but for all. Women, as much as men, are curious to understand crypto and are ready to invest.
Traditional Finance
In our traditional system, there are countless challenges alongside levelling the investment playing field and achieving financial freedom. In 2020, the national gender pay gap in the United States was roughly 18%, with not a single US state paying females higher than males (on average). This resulted in increased difficulties for women attempting to build their 401k’s and plan for retirement in a way as effectively as men could. Due to the large disparities in active income, more women are looking for ways to invest in forms of passive income…cue cryptocurrencies.
How Crypto Supports Females
Decentralised finance allows for transactions to occur without passing through a third-party intermediary, granting individuals complete control and freedom over their own assets. This not only increases efficiency and affordability but provides a sense of security that is often overshadowed when interacting with third-party sources. Gemini conducted a survey that found among those planning to invest in crypto, 40% are women. Additionally, 39% of millennial women would be more interested in crypto if they knew it could make finance more accessible. Proving the intense need for women to feel empowered by their financial options and decisions.
Women in Crypto
Stats published by eToro showed only 15% of Bitcoin investors were women, however, this number had increased from 10% in 2020. Though only a small increase, this does show more women are becoming investors and this could be in part to the influence of women like Elizabeth Stark, and Katie Haun.
Elizabeth Stark redefined the cryptocurrency marketplace for women. This double-ivy league graduate co-founded the company Lightning Labs in 2016, a “second layer” protocol that helps run the blockchain more efficiently. One of Stark’s famous quotes is “Welcome to Bitcoin, you can’t tell people what to do.”
When speaking to Karen Hao of Quartz, Stark said “The perception that there are no women in bitcoin discourages women from getting involved.”
Katie Haun, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz was introduced to Bitcoin in the currency’s early days, utilising blockchain’s capabilities to investigate criminal activity. Haun was interviewed by Grace Hong from Business Today, where she was asked about how she got involved in crypto: “I was looking for something different, away from violent and organised crime, so my chief asked me to work on Bitcoin. I quickly realised it wasn’t something that could be prosecuted—that would be akin to saying ‘Let’s prosecute the internet’ or ‘Let’s prosecute cash.’ It’s not possible nor desirable. Instead, I set about looking at some of the cases that involved nefarious uses of cryptocurrencies.”
Haun then went on to tell Hong about the crypto task force she created in the Department of Justice, “I realised there’s a real need for bridges to be built between the crypto ecosystem on one hand, and the government, policymakers, and regulators, on the other hand. We discussed it within the Justice Department and decided we would create a task force in San Francisco.
“One purpose of the task force was to bring and investigate cases involving criminal uses of cryptocurrency. Another very important purpose was to help educate and facilitate understanding on all ends: government regulators, technologists, developers, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders in the crypto ecosystem. There was a liaison function and mutual cooperation.
“A third purpose was having a point of contact—a lot of times, the government’s first line of defence against the criminals in the community would be the people at crypto companies, and naturally, crypto companies also wanted a point of contact to go to. And finally, the task force was the training ground to keep prosecutors and other government agents up to speed with developments in the sector.”
Flashforward a decade and Haun is serving as an independent director on the board for the billion-dollar company, Coinbase. Her crypto advice reads, “Don’t let yourself think ‘Oh, it’s too complex, I don’t want to go dive deep in it.’ You don’t need to dive deep into it, just go learn something about it that you didn’t know.” Haun encourages all individuals to be patient with the crypto space as it is ever-changing and evolving. Having seen the success that Haun has had, it is likely many more women will be inspired to get involved in crypto.
Coinbase competitor Blockchain.com raises $300 million in crypto funding frenzy
Just one month removed from a $120 million dollar financing round, London-based cryptocurrency giant Blockchain.com announced Wednesday it raised another $300 million to reach a $5.2 billion post-money valuation.
The Series C funding round comes as the 10-year-old crypto company reported hitting 31 million verified users across 200 countries. Blockchain.com CEO Peter Smith said the company has been able to raise $1.5 billion since its founding as institutional interest continues to swell with bitcoin holding above $50,000.
“In the last 12 months, between debt and equity, we’ve raised over $1.5 billion,” he told Yahoo Finance Live. “I think that’s really driven by the fact that experienced and sophisticated investors are seeing for the first time not just consumers in the crypto market, but institutions as well. And when they see a business like ours that’s profitable on both the consumer basis as well as on the institutional basis as well as profitable overall they want to be a part of that growth story.”
The company, which originally launched as a block explorer for users to view public transactions, now offers other services beyond its popular open-source wallet for customers to trade and store cryptocurrencies. The company has grown to add financial services like credit and structured products. Smith highlighted that part of the business focused on offerings for institutional investors as an area of personal focus.
Blockchain Co-Founder & CEO Peter Smith speaks during the Web Summit 2018 in Lisbon, Portugal on November 6, 2018. (Photo by Pedro Fiúza/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
“I’m spending a lot of time with clients trying to figure out what they are going to need over the next two or three years to become long-term, active participants in the crypto market,” he said.
Blockchain.com now has another $300 million to work with to build out those offerings, but that new capital hasn’t caused Smith to rule out an expedited route to follow competitor Coinbase to the public market.
“We haven’t needed to raise capital in quite a while because the business is very profitable, but we continue to be very active about thinking about the best way to position the company for long-term success,” Smith said. “And that may involve going public soon.”
Story continues
Blockchain.com’s funding round follows other recent large deals in the crypto space, including the $350 million crypto digital exchange and banking platform BlockFi was able to raise earlier this year in its Series D.
Zack Guzman is an anchor for Yahoo Finance Live as well as a senior writer covering entrepreneurship, cannabis, cryptocurrency, and breaking news at Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter @zGuz.
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Here’s one way to find out everything you need to know about bitcoin and the crypto revolution underway
A financial paradigm shift may be evolving right under our very noses.
The very nature of money, and in many cases financial markets, is changing and it is easy to miss it in all the fuss over the daily price fluctuations of bitcoin BTCUSD, -3.25% and dogecoin, and the nascent assets’ similarities to the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s and Tulip mania of the 1600s.
See: Bitcoin could become ‘outlawed the way gold was outlawed’ in 1934, speculates Bridgewater’s Dalio
But as the prologue to Paul Vigna and Michael Casey’s 2015 book “The Age of Cryptocurrency” states, bitcoin “is here to stay, and you ignore it at your peril.” There’s a reason major companies, including Tesla TSLA, -4.82% , PayPal PYPL, -3.90% and Microstrategy MSTR, -8.22% , have been investing billions in bitcoin in recent months. It isn’t quite clear if the reasons are good ones.
But as billionaire Ray Dalio told Yahoo Finance in an interview that aired Wednesday, bitcoin — and in many ways the broader blockchain complex — “has proven itself over the last 10 years…it’s by and large worked on an operational basis…those are the pluses.”
Read: Bitcoin climbs as Elon Musk says Americans can now use it to buy a Tesla
No one knows what the future holds for cryptographic assets, but MarketWatch’s aim will be to explore what the emergence of digital tokens and bitcoin mean for your wallet in a two-day event to be held April 7 and 14 at 1 p.m. Eastern.
Register for MarketWatch’s Investing in Crypto here
MarketWatch and Barron’s journalists will convene top experts in crypto, including Galaxy Digital’s Michael Novogratz; Securities and Exchange Commissioner Hester Peirce; Sheila Warren, deputy head of C4IR at the World Economic Forum, and other financial pros to highlight the latest in the nascent sector and discuss what the outcropping of institutional interest in virtual currency and blockchain portend for Main Street and Wall Street — and the best strategies for prospective digital-currency buyers.
Check out: Tesla shopping with bitcoin represents ‘major step’ for crypto, analyst says
The sessions will be moderated by reporters and editors from MarketWatch and Barron’s, with the hope of helping readers navigate the rapidly evolving digital landscape.
Where are the crypto markets headed? Will the U.S. finally have a bitcoin exchange-traded fund in 2021? How are central bankers thinking about digital dollars?
All those questions, and many more, will be explored.