Crypto's Gender Disparity: What Can Be Done About It? 4 Women Weigh In - Ep.234

Transcript

[Music] hi everyone welcome to unchained your no hype resource for all things crypto i'm your host laura shin a journalist with over two decades of experience i started covering crypto six years ago and as a senior editor at forbes was the first mainstream media reporter to cover cryptocurrency full-time follow unchained on twitter at unchained underscore pod where you can find all sorts of content ranging from my weekly newsletter to updates on my upcoming book and a whole lot more today's episode is a panel i moderated for amber group on power women in crypto the four speakers are executives in crypto who are happy to discuss the role of gender in the industry what explanations are most effective for bringing in women good hiring practices for bringing more

women into the industry and more panelists include mia deng a partner at dragonfly capital amy zhang vice president of sales at fire blocks alexis galba founder at open and annabel huang partner at amber group for those of you watching on video you may notice we're all wearing white the organizers asked us to wear white as a symbol of inclusiveness across traditional finance and crypto no matter where you're listening this panel was an extremely interesting discussion on a subject that many women in the industry speak about privately but not openly i hope you enjoy it now onto the show today's episode is sponsored by ey blockchain ernst young is committed to supporting integration of the world's business

ecosystems on the public ethereum blockchain the crypto.com app lets you buy earn and spend crypto all in one place earn up to 8.5 interest on your bitcoin and 14 interest on your stable coins paid weekly download the crypto.com app and get 25 with the code laura the link is in the description kuiper's dynamic market maker dmm is the first d5 protocol designed to adapt to market conditions to optimize fees maximize returns and enable extremely high capital efficiency for liquidity providers hi everyone welcome to this panel put on by the amber group

power women of the next generation from traditional finance to crypto we have four different panelists here and we're going to start with each of them telling us how we got into crypto and what their company does and what it is that they do and amy zhang why don't we start with great well hi everyone uh it's a pleasure to be here i'm super excited to share about our experiences and talk about you know women in crypto um no my name is amy i run sales for fire blocks in asia fire blocks is a technology company that provides secure digital asset transfer infrastructure and custom infrastructure for over 250 clients from crypto hedge funds to otc desks to

exchanges you know most recently we were a technology provider vendor selected for some of the larger banks in the industry as well so really the my goal i fire block is to drive revenue for us in the apac region and stop relationships with partners and deliver products to allow them to continue to build a bigger business in the digital asset space before fire blocks i ran sales for a company called diginex that was my first role in uh crypto uh started in 2018 and you know late 27 2018 and at dgx i helped them to grow their exchange trading custody fund the funds business uh prior

to that and my foreign to crypto i will use to be a sales trader at deutsche bank where i serviced institutional clients right and really my kind of move and foray into crypto um started when i was at deutsche and then looked at you know my colleagues and you know looked at where they were and i thought to myself you know i didn't want to be any of them 10 years from now so i went out and ventured out into looking for new opportunities and crypto became one of the industries that really draw my attention so and the rest is history great and we also have annabel huang yeah sure i'm very again very happy to be here as well and um being able to chat

with a lot of my old friends i knew amy um from deutsche bank who were the senior analyst and also mia who was at amber and now one of our our investors so and then a lot of the new friends that made um so very glad to be here with you guys um hi my name is annabel huang i am a partner at ember group we're a global leading crypto finance service provider servicing institutional and individual clients globally we help our clients buy and sell crypto um if they have borrow lending needs and their asset management needs and crypto we help them across basically uh all of the crypto finance needs uh we

service a lot of the crypto native funds and and institutions as well as a lot of the people who are new to crypto especially after this full cycle this year so it's been a very fun ride before amber i was um at airswap it's a decentralized exchange built on ethereum and that that was my first foray in into crypto that was in 2018 um i i was at namura um where similar to deutsche i was doing effects and rates structuring related roles and that's where i met a few of my carnegie mellon alarms in new york and they were telling me about this decentralized finance and and how we're able to

really automate a lot of the processes that we've seen in traditional finance into a smart contract on this new uh public chain and and that to me is really marrying finance uh with technology um and really revolutionized finance as we know it so you know decided to give it a shot and just you know cannot turn back ever since and mia we have mia deng as well hey everyone it's uh awesome to be here and i'm i'm mia and i'm a partner at dragonfly we're a global crypto venture fund with presence in asia and the states and dragonfly invests across the uh you know sectors in crypto

so we have centralized financial infrastructure like companies like amber and open is also a d5 a big focus area of ours and uh you know deep tech and nft so um and i particularly head up our invest investments in asia with a focus in china um and uh before uh before dragonfly i was a founding member at uh amber joined them when there were six people uh in hong kong and shenzhen and that was my four into asia's crypto and landscape and really saw how that connects to the broader crypto uh market and the founding thesis of dragonfly is that crypto is a

market global from day one and we need uh have deep understanding of both east and wise and that's how uh dragonfly um comes in the middle and uh and then yeah before crypto i was uh actually uh come from a tech background i was a product manager at mobike which is this bike chair unicorn company in in china and i think that experience taught me how for the internet companies the room left for innovation is actually quite limited uh they actually the the incumbents like the giants kind of controls the user data and um crypto seems like the perfect way to turn that around so great and finally alexis gaba

hey i'm alexis i'm excited to be here um so i'm the co-founder of open we are building a decentralized options platform on ethereum uh so the first for the first time anyone anywhere can create or trade an option on any erc20 i've just been super excited about crypto and d5 for a while now and very thrilled to be in the space um kind of before open i was studying at uc berkeley um and then dropped out of school to do open um but while i was at cal also started she 256 which is a 501c3 nonprofit focused on diversity and crypto that's been absolutely amazing to work on as well it honestly just started as a conference and seeing the

response of the community was incredible and since then we've built it into a full non-profit um and we have a mentorship program that's matched over 900 people from over 40 countries which has been really cool we're working on some studies to capture tangible data um on diversity inclusion in the space and a lot more initiatives so very excited to be here and excited about everything that's happening in space right now great so when the organizer for this reached out to me about this panel i was excited to do it because for years now i have been in these different chat groups and discussion rooms slack rooms for women and crypto and they have a lot to say on this topic actually but

surprisingly if i would try to do a show on it or write an article on it or whatever people generally wouldn't actually really want to discuss it publicly so i was curious to know why it is that you all were willing to do so and um you know whether or not you thought it was a good thing to discuss it publicly um or you know i think in the case of a lot of these other women that declined many of them would rather only talk about their work um so yeah just what is your perspective on on that issue i mean i guess i can go first here where i think a lot of times is you know when you're working in industry that might be perhaps

male dominated you want people to really focus on your work and remove the focus on you being a woman because you want to call attention to it um you want to be treated equally right so as such you really push for you know value email my work but but really i think a lot of times you do want to talk and speak out about it because there are uh perhaps um inequality in in certain industries when it comes to being a woman in the workforce and we have unique challenges that we want to be able to share and communicate um with each other you know i i shared it the same feeling i think uh i guess both of us came from traditional finance space as well as well and that was a very white male dominated scene

and when i first joined i almost felt the need to blend in you know to be a bro and not to so that i could be treated equally on the structuring desk in new york um there was just me um my my former md probably i never had a woman on his team before so he didn't really know even how to deal with me almost he's like can i like can i just tell you as it is i'm like yes yes uh we're all professional you know um people here and um so i think there's a little bit of that and then sometimes i even feel like oh maybe we shouldn't um there are there are a lot of women in

crypto chats and then um i feel like there are a lot of issues that we feel strongly about um at least when we talk to each other and and always just finding so inspiring to get a group of women together and talk about the work we do and it's just inspiring because there are not that many of us in the space um so but then there is the fear of us you know perhaps making it as a way to call attention to ourselves or to get any unfair advantage but i really don't think it is i think it's just opening up a platform for us to to chat together and hopefully encouraging more women to come so we have a community just as a lot of the men would have their

you know fraternity uh organizations of the likes uh and finance yeah yeah i mean i was just add on to that um i mean like crypto is an intersection of tech and finance so it's too super like well uh like male dominant industry so you get crypto which is like even more so um and uh i think the rationale for me is quite straightforward like i think if we are just like if we hold the thesis that crypto is going to be adopted by the entire humanity and it's 50 50 uh you know split by men and women and in the process of designing this tech and really uh getting in mainstream adoption we need that

uh representation like and i think right now that representation is heavily uh skewed and i think that would carry that mission to at least to balance it out a little bit and alexis as the founder of she 2 56 do you have thoughts as well no absolutely i think jumping off of what everyone already said you know our goal for crypto is is for it to serve the whole population and how can we serve the whole population if the people building aren't representative of the people we are to serve um so i think it's incredibly important and you know to get more people in the space and i think it is inspiring to see that other people have done it before and that they're there are like you know real real struggles or real difficulties

but everyone is focused on getting through it everyone here is like incredible at what they do and focused on their work but at the same time is also open to having these conversations and bringing people in and so i think that is really important and so what would you say are the main issues when it comes to this general topic of women and crypto you know obviously one is simply the fact that there are many fewer women in crypto than there are men it's not uh anywhere near gender parity so there's that but then maybe there are other issues i don't you know what what do you guys see as kind of the main um issues or main things that you would want others to know about this topic

um i guess i can start i think the fact that we there are so few of us um and we're underrepresented i think gave the outside world the uh the impression that oh this is you know a space only for for men because it it is uh very it can't be very demanding right it's 24 7 markets for anyone who wants to be in this business uh it is physically and mentally demanding but it doesn't mean that the women should be discouraged to join and i um you know i i am making a point of hiring more women on my team and even just at amber in general uh but then a lot of times and even at a candidate level you don't see a lot of female applicants and i just

feel like maybe um they they feel you know dissuaded uh from the start and um there are a fear of uh people uh of women at uh deutsche and namura or even just at carnegie mellon reached out to me saying that oh you know it's just so great to to hear your voice even in these platforms and making me feel like i can also be part of it and and i want all of us uh to be able to tell them that maybe it's not easy just as it's not easy to to do anything well but then being a woman is certainly not a disadvantage uh if not an advantage in itself

because i think um crypto should be very inclusive and um and then it really should represent a more diverse background when companies building products or building infrastructures or anything in the space we need uh to hear both sides of the of the story and another thing um is crypto also most crypto businesses today maybe the exception of a few are still startups right and i think a lot of the decision you have as a person to join a startup company is you know they don't have a huge hr department that has well trouted processes when it comes to like dealing with issues we're seeing on the traditional

bank these are all done and you know you could go in knowing how your insurance would be like and all of these custom benefits that you get right and you don't have to go through this battle again versus when you're in a startup you have to not only do your job but then knowing the fact that there might be potential of discrimination what do you do like so i think a lot of these women think about these problems in their head a lot right where they're like you know how do i want to manage my risk my my career and what's the most optimal way for me to succeed and they evaluate the risks associated being joined a new industry that is predominantly dominated by a group of people and um and again these are startups right so

all these risks compound together i feel like the the problem might not be as apparent and if you break it down into different layers of industry that we operate in the result is you know they're just less women in our industry working yeah yeah i think it goes pretty broad like a you know like mia mentioned earlier like crypto is the intersection of tech and finance and societally on a larger scale beyond just crypto women are often dissuaded from going into tech or finance or don't learn about it as you know at a young age just anecdotally like so many of my male friends like started investing or getting into the stock market and stuff like that way before my female friends ever did and had completely different risk tolerances

um and and different you know conceptions towards it and you know not to say that women can't women can like all these people are doing incredible all my you know friends are investing now doing incredible things just like at a young age their teachers their parents their friends weren't telling them hey like you should check out the stock market like you should learn how to do this the way their male peers were getting that kind of encouragement um and so kind of a broader like socialized thing at a younger age where it's like okay like crypto's the intersection of these two things how do we say you're you're welcome here and we're going to teach you like you don't like you can come in here and you can ask questions and we're going to help you answer them like i didn't know what an order book was until like

i started looking into crypto i didn't know any of this stuff and so definitely was was learning it on the fly and mia did you want to add anything yeah i think there's a um really a lack of like where i would love to see change i think like she's 250 is doing great things about bringing women together and i think really when you find role models you want to find those who you can relate with and um and i think right now is very little visibility of these role models or you know or just people when you can reach out who are already in the industry and i think that's why having a very clear theme

of uh you know a panel like this or a sheet 256 is really giving like that kind of you know beacon or you know uh basically for people to uh you know for more women to like reach out to so since we did mention chief 256 a few times alexis i did want to ask you um what did you feel were your big takeaways from from that initiative about either you know what the main obstacles are to bring more diversity to crypto or um you know what you think maybe are the best ways to overcome those obstacles absolutely i think that's a great question i think one insight that i'll point to that's pretty interesting we ran a beta of our job board last year

um and the majority of the postings on the job board were for the senior level positions but a lot of the folks who were coming in from our community were either more junior or didn't have experience in crypto and it was hard to find a match of companies that were willing to like put in the investment to train up people to get them to you know whatever level versus looking for like senior talent out of the gate and the definition of senior might be missing different perspectives or missing different things that these people bring to the table that might not be in that job description so what we've done for you know that job board beta and then now the jobber that's going to be launching this year is put together a set of guidelines that companies can look to to help them improve their practices and

help them up with their job descriptions to bring more people in the door and see how you know those people can add specific value to their company and so that's one anecdote that i'll point out that um you know what happened recently that i thought was was interesting and um in terms of how people can get involved i think one really cool thing about the emergence of like defined governance is that it's really made this playing field very accessible like you can go in with like an anonymous identity ask your questions like no one even has to know who you are you can um you can join groups like g256 where you can connect with other people and you can start making pull requests asking questions

you know contributing on forums and people are usually very willing to answer questions which is something that i really appreciate about this space um but i think it's always incredibly helpful to have those like-minded communities and places where you feel comfortable asking questions you know even with your own identity without having to go make an anonymous account to feel comfortable and so i just uh you know we did discuss how a lot of other industries that relate to crypto also are known for being more male dominated and annabelle and amy since you both have that background in traditional finance i was curious to hear your take on you know

how the two compare in terms of what it's like to be a woman in either of these industries traditional finance or crypto is it different or is it the same or you know how are you finding it um maybe i can i think it's actually different in a way i think you know we were from like a bulge market bank um i knew from that kind of industry where in the last 20 30 years have went through a massive shift in culture right you know if i was a trader on wall street 30 years ago i think my experience will perhaps be very different than i do now because a lot of the issues i think you do get to see have been resolved more so right you know within traditional finance there's

a lot of these women's group and there's a lot of support in the organization in terms of mentorship and you know because they're larger organizations as well but you know as me joining um the trading floor at deutsche yes i know i noticed visibly that i was one of the few women who were there um but it wasn't as though i felt like i'm on an island by myself and i tried to figure out everything on my own there's a lot of resources being there to help you i think when it comes to crypto partially because it's new partially because these again are startups um coming in you know it didn't get the same kind of resources right you have to figure a lot of it on your own you have to talk to your managers and speak with hr and figured out like you

know what does i need to do right and this is a you know um so i think that's difference number one um between like traditional into the world we operate in um and and i think part two probably is also different again crypto is also very tech driven right so i think with trading um it's mostly you know there's capital markets and i think tech culture maybe mia can speak to a little bit more but like it's also unique tech culture that we also have to operate and within um as well and i speak to a lot of times you know the product managers who are women within you know crypto and they deal more similarly to what they used to deal with in the tech industry right which is how do i make

sure my voices are heard how do i get my male peers to respect me it's actually like very interesting because the industry that we operate in and there's both side of the coin where i think come from like a trading seat you feel like oh i need to hang with the traders and be more bro-y and be with that perspective right versus i think if you look at from a tech perspective then it's actually very different from a culture um elements as well yeah i i would um echo what amy just said i think um that's also because we were in uh i guess i was in new york uh at deutsche versus amy was in hong kong so maybe there's also slightly that um cultural differences too because and in new york it is very i would say very politically correct

when it comes to a lot of the things gender related um so there are even like uh they would make a point to give you a lot of the support groups and there are a lot of like women's association that you can join so you definitely feel like okay this is a topic that people talk about um and obviously with the whole metoo movement you know there's different backdrops but then it is the gender topic a gender issue is very top of mind for a lot of people in the us but versus in asia i guess culturally it's different an equality level is perhaps different between genders in asia more so i i i at least that's how i feel um so i

think that there's also that aspect of it and um and crypto for sure i think um because most of us are in startups i remember the first joiners um like there there is the physical checkups benefit for everyone um there are so few women i don't think ob gyn was even included that didn't even you know cross their mind um that so it's funny but then it's also serious right that um i think that just means for for us who are early um and in the space for us we have to do more work together hopefully and and to build a better um baseline for a lot of women that come after

and wait so earlier when you were saying that you felt like the gender issues in the us are different from than in asia how so i it wasn't clear to me which direction i think it's just more uh talked about in the u.s that people understand that there is gender inequality they they accept it acknowledge it and then people are are doing things or at least trying uh harder i feel to um to address that versus in asia there's more inherent um gender inequality that's more rooted in in a culture perhaps yeah um and it's more accepted people don't talk about it people kind of expect it

like if you're a woman um like here in asia when i try to do business people are saying you know who are you an assistant or you know and that's their default assumption and and it's hard to climb out of that you have to go further you have to work much harder to prove that no you're right i have a seated table and perhaps deserve more so than you do so you know that's just some extra hurdles that that we have to uh to overcome wow okay okay yeah and that's yeah that's definitely not good if people just assume that because you're a woman you're an assistant that's actually really right yeah i've had that encounter as well it's like um also it's i mean i think

the goal here's not about asia versus ui so what not but right but i think um also it's a lot of like social pressure too it's not just like business pressure it's like people look at you and be like oh you know you're getting old enough like you have a husband you're getting married and there's all these expectations of you in asia specifically more so probably in the u.s um and that adds into your overall decision-making right like we talk about why are we having these conversations um and a lot of it's also social pressure um and you have friends families influences that has maybe a more traditional way of looking at things and yes of course you know we all can fight against it and perhaps find our own identity um but the current is going against you

right your concept to swim upwards and it's tough i think that's probably why at the end of the day you combine many different things including the the difficulties they fade professionally and then the difficulty they face you know culturally and the influence you have to deal with from friends and families um and that's why we're having these conversations today right about you know why is it more harder and how can we do what can we do to address these things i have noticed that um and and this is now just almost getting into cultural differences which is not the exact topic but i have noticed sometimes if i deal with foreigners from asia they will ask me questions that are like quite directed about

you know some of some of these uh things that are quite specific to women so um yeah somehow just being a woman makes them want to be nosy about those things um but anyway so um one thing i did want to ask though is you know we've kind of been talking and abstract about what it's like to be a woman in a male male-dominated industry but do any of you feel that um it's been a hindrance or that you've experienced any discrimination or um is it just something that is more subtle or you know what has your just experience been of being a woman in crypto when most of the people that you work with are men maybe i have a really good example in

this um i have a friend of mine who recently came up to me installed in the industry and said hey i just started a new job and then you know i'm pregnant i was like wow congratulations i'm so happy for you i'm super excited oh my god like all of these things and um she was like i'm worried about telling my manager because you know i was like shocked right never considered this in my life and i was like you should not feel bad and you should not feel sorry like and that's something that really kind of hit me first time and in a while where i was like oh like you do have to think about these things differently or maybe because i'm not in that stage in the life where i am thinking about that but you know that was something that um

as an example right but maybe this is not supposed to crypto maybe it's just general women in the workforce um but but that's an example where you know i think a lot of women have to think about these things being like oh what's my timeline look like i'm out of commission what does that mean you know yeah i think uh just to add on that um i think the um there's this like expectation of you for uh okay you're women then you must be good at like dealing with people or like you must have really good soft skills and you add a different touch to the team that you're like a good additional thing to have and so like sometimes the uh the the sort of the way that the emphasis of your skill sets uh that they see is like because you're women

you're better you know you're more empathetic and etc but well that is all true but then that could be you know sometimes the focus of um you know what they expect out of you so um so i think that's that's uh that kind of creates this like reinforcement uh loop that uh you know psychologically could uh be difficult to break out of with over 10 million users crypto.com is the easiest place to buy and sell over 90 cryptocurrencies download the crypto.com app now and get 25 with the code laura if you're a hodler crypto.com earn pays industry-leading interest rates on over 30 coins including bitcoin at up to 8.5 interest

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on may 18th to 21st for a deep dive into zero knowledge privacy technologies accounting and tax rules as well as the future of finance sign up and learn more at ey.com global blockchain summit or blockchain.ey.com kyber's dynamic market maker dmm is a game changer in d5 being the first protocol designed to react to market conditions to optimize fees while providing extremely high capital efficiency for liquidity providers fees are adjusted dynamically based on market conditions to maximize returns and reduce the impact of impermanent loss liquidity providers can customize

the pricing curve to create amplified pools that greatly improve capital efficiency and reduce trade slippage depositing tokens to earn fees is also fast and simple with this liquidity easily accessible by dapps aggregators or other users visit dmm dot exchange now so we've been discussing women working in crypto and yet there's also plenty of other ways to get involved in the industry and the wall street journal recently reported about more women um taking up crypto as kind of like a trading hobby and they reported that one in four customers who traded crypto so far in 2021 on the robin hood app

are um women and um they also however they did say that fewer women trade crypto on robin hood than trade stocks and etfs and then um they also noted the statistic that over the last couple years etoro said that the number of female crypto traders in the us on this platform has increased by half to about 20 of all users in the us and um you know these frankly in a way actually are better numbers than i've seen in the past so that is heartening um and yet obviously given that women are uh 51 of the population um it's you know nowhere near uh their

numbers in the general population so um what do you you know what do you think is the cause for the increase in the number of women um and yet also what do you think we can do to get more women interested in crypto i think i'll start i think there are more women in space perhaps or more people in general because the infrastructure has become more mature and they're more regulated venues where you can trade and where people feel safe and secure about their assets about what they're trading and crypto has become a lot more mainstream than last cycle four years ago so i think that's just a general trend and

perhaps um and again not trying to stereotype hero but uh perhaps women would be slightly more risk averse than a lot of the men who might just want to um who are perhaps more inclined to trade riskier things on and and new platforms but now because there are a lot of um these better known names in this space i think you know robin hood or even coinbase that just went public i think they gave people in general a lot of faith in this industry and i think more women are perhaps uh drawn into the industry and feel like it is you know safe and okay for them to start trading

and i think um amongst the the younger generation the the gen z's and uh or even you know whoever comes after i think for them maybe it's just really embracing a new form of asset class in truly digital form just as a lot of the things you're used to in their life now living talking to friends on zoom and doing payments and digital formats so i think perhaps for them as a generation it's just more accepting and then no matter for for men or women they they are willing to try this out um with uh so we also launched a retail facing app last year um so within six months we've gotten

significant traction and just looking at the data it is quite interesting i think for us on our platform a third of the users are are female and the majority the age group and the majority of the age group is within you know 30 years old or or younger so i think that perhaps plain to to the thesis interesting and is your app um focused on the asian market it is it can be accessed globally uh it just we started with very simple functions where people can buy and sell bitcoin ethereum you know the major tokens and then can earn yields on it um so and then people in in asia in

north america and europe can access it but are the majority like just i'm curious because i was going to ask if you feel that there's a difference in um the gender imbalance in asia when it comes to just general interest in crypto versus in the west i'm not sure about gender but i i feel like if anything perhaps the level of participation in asia is more so than than the west like you look at japan korea a lot of the asian countries the crypto adoption level is much higher i think in korea people traded more

crypto and volume than in korean stock market so yeah like i think more than uh more than a third of the population the entire korean population holds crypto um that's just something that we passed very different from the us yeah okay but you know you're not sure if that extends to a greater percentage of women in asia being interested in crypto than in the us or is anything does anybody know that sure yeah okay and nobody else is aware of of what that number might be no okay because yeah because that would be kind of interesting to look at but yeah for sure i'm going to take a

look later okay okay always on our platform and so for you just with your friends um because i personally have tried to do this with my friends and i will just tell you that equally between the male and female friends the lack of interest in crypto is like the same um i i will say my my best friend who's a woman read my uh a draft of my book and then she actually did become interested in crypto so um you know uh so i i kind of got one convert but yeah no um a funny story i have about this is that i uh was hanging out with a male friend and i uh this was during the whole sushi

swap uniswap saga and i tried to tell him the story which to me was like the most exciting thing that like had happened in the last you know few weeks or whatever and trying to explain it with all the drama and he kind of like laughed a fake laugh and then changed the subject so um clearly i didn't get it but anyway um so for you when you're talking to your non-crypto friends whether it's men or women but you know we're mostly talking about women so i was just curious do you find that there are any certain explanations or pitches or descriptions that work better with your female friends to get them excited or interested or do you find that there are maybe

certain themes or topics that they gravitate more toward like decentralization or a new financial system or control over your data or you know something else um you know how what have you found to be an effective way to get women interested yeah i can jump in here yeah what i found most effective is to literally just send them some crypto um and just have them try stuff out and it's been so interesting i did this with my little sister who was 11 years old at the time i sent her some eat this was like a couple of years ago and she went she traded that eighth for die on unispop and then after that she got the uni airdrop and she was like now this 11 year old with like the uni airdrop she's like can buy all the candy

in the world and so then she's going and telling all her friends like oh my god i traded on this decentralized exchange and i got like this token for it now all her friends are like downloading metamask and so just the act of like sending someone a little bit of crypto and then feeling the magic themselves and then encouraging their friends and their circles is what has absolutely worked best for me wow i love that story i have a lot of our friends um a lot of them are actually uh girls and i think recently with nfts uh that's the major thing that they're like okay no i don't know mia what do you do all day what's this crypto thing i don't care and now it's like oh suddenly there's

new medium of creation of creating new form of art and it's like super like they're like wow like tell me how i can make art out of this and you know all of them are like vr artists ar artists and it's it's super cool to see that and actually recently we launched a new nft platform called the tr lab and also with some of the really awesome like female collectors so we have cinli cohen from uh she was the she's the deputy chairwoman of christie's um and also wendy murdock from artsy uh and you know shanghai museum and

uh shanghai like arts021 which uh yeah i'm also very excited to uh you know create with uh with these ladies and also i think for not depends on age group right i think um a lot of my friends in my media circles are getting to this point in their career where they're making like a lot of meaningfully more so than what they were when they were like much much younger right and they're thinking like you know how do i manage my wealth like what do i put my money in so the conversation has changed i think a lot of it about you know what we back then is like how to pay my student loan and what i do about taxes right now it's more about like okay well i have more disposable income how can i invest and like what are the

ways i can take control over my finances and that's i think i think a lot of my female friends are taking more of an active role in this because they know like financial independence is super important for them and um and they're more interested in learning about you know amy what is this thing what is bitcoin thing that you know you talk about all day long right and they're like what does that mean so they're more interested from that perspective but i think becomes the medium of like distribution i definitely like notice that you know if you're sending crypto to your friends it's the easiest way if you can think down a mobile app on a wall on their phone like they don't have to go through the tedious process i'm on boarding perhaps and you know they're much more interested very early um and then you explain you know the

risk and the processes and things like that so i feel like for those that worked out well from just like a fundamental investment perspective um versus my male friends are more interesting more like financial instrument they're interested in the instrument elements of this asset class rather than just like the underlying right so it's like how do i trade options and how do i do the same thing i used to connect these interactive brokers right like they're thinking more of like trading this versus my female friends i'm thinking more of as a form of like how do i earn yield and how do i you know invest in underlying stuff in general so i think there's a bit of a difference in in approach as well uh maybe perhaps most of my guy friends are in finance they understand this more but um yeah so that's something i

noticed across my like two friend groups yeah and for me it's similar um most of my finance friends no matter male or female they are looking into it as perhaps uh you know how do i is it worth it for me to allocate a little bit uh within my portfolio what is that going to look like and they understand the risk reward profile uh of this new asset class and they're very um open to it and um and then also have some friends in in art or entertainment uh and the other draw file that for them is is nfts and a lot of them are asking me oh how do i issue one for the work that i'm doing or

you have a group of artists or um youtube stars wanted to to launch something their own and how do i get started so i think it really depends on what they do and how blockchain in general relates to their actual interests if their interest is in art and fashion and content in general or in a more finance driven field i do think blockchain there's so many different applications that live on it so i'm sure there is um something for everyone and for me i haven't seen that's particularly to to men or to women i think as long as they find something that's so relevant to what they love doing and then they just want to jump into it yeah yeah i'm finding the same that now

with the nft thing this is the first time i can get my real friends involved because most of them are creators of some sort and and they're you know they're kind of interested and they're like oh it's this so um so you know we've talked about uh your personal experiences and we've talked about kind of general people taking this up as a hobby um but one other thing i want to talk about was you know alexis you're a co-founder of open and you know as somebody who is often looking for different people to interview i have noticed that you know there just really aren't that many co-founders in this space who are women and i think it's um kind of even a smaller percentage uh than

there are women in the space in general and so this question isn't just for you alexis but you know it's for anybody to discuss but why do you guys think that even when it comes to co-founders that it's an even smaller percentage to our women than of you know just women in general in crypto and you know i think for me what i find a little bit confusing about that is also just the fact that crypto right now is this kind of a total um you know open space where things are being built fresh and so it's not like there's super established things you know people can go out and kind of create new stuff so um

you know what's your theory about that and what do you also think are maybe some of the best ways to encourage more women to found new projects yeah i think that's a really good question um i feel like it's a kind of a general thing across startups um it is definitely like a riskier thing to do like even when i was dropping out of school and deciding to do this there was definitely like a whole thought process that went through my head about like you know like what's the worst that can happen and when this i was like oh the worst that can happen isn't that bad like i go back to school then it felt like a lot better and like something i could do but definitely getting over that risk hump was something for me um and i totally agree like crypto is this mine field

right now in this vast open space and i think the more we can encourage people to take risks and be like hey society's not going to punish you for taking that risk you're going to learn something it's going to be a ton of fun there are people going to be on that journey with you the more we can spread that narrative as opposed to like oh it's this like big whole thing like no you're starting something fun with your friends you're gonna have a good time um i think maybe maybe that could help like peel away the layers of it being intimidating or super risky and try to make it more accessible and then you know the other thing frankly is like people just being able to like have the funding to do that like uh my co-founder aparna got the teal fellowship we got a grant from

maker dao so we were in a position where we were able to like do these things which was really great um and so you know right now a lot of these protocols have larger treasuries and they are using them to give out grants which is really great and so it's an opportunity for them to enable more people to take that jump and you know take that risk and i think a lot of times we look at things as the fight but we look at things as like the results right the result is we're seeing less women as co-founders in crypto as men but if you ask yourself like why that happens actually it goes way before that which is i want to start a business i need co-founders so where can i select hope understand who's got experiences in this industry which is less to begin with right so you

know i'm a female i want to select other co-founders if i select one co-founder that's mailed and that's 50 50 because that's two co-founders then one-third right so there's like that by-product of starting a business and then the question is okay well if there's less people in the industry it all goes down to like how can we get more women in the industry to work therefore building a talent pool of co-founders potentially to partner with right and then like you know how we could then grow and see that like result change um because yeah like you know you're starting your business you want it to be successful and you're not really thinking about like maybe i want to have an all-female strong team that can go and have like all female co-founders right you're thinking like how can i make sure that i bridge you know the skills that i don't

have to have a successful business and you look at the selection pool and it's a reflection of the industry so i feel like that could also be um one of the observations that you see and this goes to kind of most the topic we're talking about today right it is you look at the results and it's a reflection of it's toughest you have to be more proactive to try harder to correct it yeah well so speaking of that there were a couple of different comments earlier made about hiring and um you know a few people made the observation that there aren't as many candidates or um maybe that sometimes uh when there are female candidates that maybe they're more junior

although actually alexis when you said i wondered if it's that does she 256 kind of have just a younger membership than like another type of organization we definitely do have a younger membership like i imagine if it's folks coming from traditional finance i have a lot of financial experience we're looking at a completely different ball game but yeah 56 in particular does have like a younger audience okay yeah well but you know regardless just um when it comes to hiring what do you guys think would be some good practices to help bring more women in or to have more um you know strong female candidates for any position that you might be hiring for so i've thought about this a little bit

more before i think as a hiring manager you have to be more patient and really understand that maybe the candidate on paper in front of you may not have been exposed to the same opportunities as their peers right so therefore if you look at things like tenure how long they've worked in certain industries what job title they had previously or like what experience they've been given um like on paper it might seem like oh this candidate is better right um but really you i think i i try to personally to look at like what specific contribution they've made in this specific time that they were there um and like you know try to just speak to them like i i think you know if i interview a female and i ask them a

lot more questions or i'm like oh tell me about your experience at that time i can delve a little bit deeper instead of just judging a resume so blatantly because maybe again like resumes just combinations of experience they had previously and if we already know that the industry have issues around like getting more women or maybe they may not have the same experiences as other candidates for whatever reason then um i try to find out more characteristics about them rather than just looking and judging them on a piece of paper so i think that's um which means you know i mean i have to commit more time in doing that and i think i'm willing to right so that's one thing i found um to be helpful and another thing obviously is just doing more things like this right speaking out more and getting you know

more people out there and talk about this topic more so people feel comfortable that hey listen you know amy is someone who's pro this topic and then she's very adamant about it and then maybe you want to apply for fire blocks i don't know all right but anything i can do to help you know um i mean i've spoken to amy on the subject before i guess multiple times as we're you know just chatting about our struggles and hiring in general and um and for me it is i think a lot of the female candidates they feel better more assured when they see more women on team or even like a female leader of the team i think that gives them some confidence uh i suppose and so i think that start with

having a more diverse team to begin with right if you have all male team and an all-male company then you're saying hey we care about women's issue a lot then then that kind of would seem a bit strange but if you already have a very balanced and diverse team um then they will feel more more inclined to join the first place and also just i'm not thinking it it is on us to to really be their mentor um and then making a point to tell them that that you know you all have the support and the mentorship you're looking for because i think this is it should be important for everyone not just for female candidates or for for for the women in the space of for everyone who's looking to

continuously learn and grow um so just just making a point that that we tell everyone that um so i think that's at least how i feel while trying to build a team and a very global team as well and my team is in korea and japan and in hong kong maybe in europe and north america soon and just how do you balance also the cultural differences and then the different gender um all in one together so i think that's just um it's challenging but it's something that i love to work on to make sure that we have the right team my talent and and that should be both men and women you shouldn't be discriminating against anyone

and any other thoughts on how to um hire and maybe draw in more female candidates from other industries because i i will have to say i there are certain companies that i feel in crypto are quite good at this but frankly they're also the extremely extremely well-funded um companies and so i think they have the time to kind of like look at a lot of different resumes of people in adjacent industries and bring them in um but yeah i was just curious if there are any other thoughts you had on because i do feel like you know as we mentioned earlier since crypto is a totally new space there's probably tons of women in

adjacent industries who have skills that are transferable who would be amazing hires but it's probably you know going to be on the employers to seek them out so any tips on you know finding them or yeah and and persuading them to to jump into this new area yeah i think the um the crypto culture looking from the outside could seem like oh this is just like nerdy like mimi like you know on twitter and uh it could seem like a little bit like not what most women found uh you know i really really was so again i think goes back to my point earlier is about

increasing visibility and also uh telling the narrative of crypto in a in the most like uh concise and friendly way and i think for that i think um you know i think platforms like ship 5056 is awesome and actually recently i'm also thinking of putting together a class uh on crypto and uh also wanting to bring in uh like female guest speakers and uh yeah basically telling the narrative crypto in uh by by all women and uh you know you know in a simple and concise way and so hopefully that would attract more uh talent to uh to participate in this industry all right so since i imagine a number of people who are listening to this show or

people well or this panel are people who are either um interested in working the industry or are already working in it and so what is your advice for women in the crypto industry to find their footing and make their way up this is a really good question and we've been thinking about it a lot at chi-256 i'm definitely gonna just plug sheet256.org because it's got a ton of resources for this exact thing um there's a discord community where you can ask lots of questions there's the job board where you can find tangible jobs there's a beginner's guide which goes through like step-by-step really good resources to start with um and so i would say you know start

with a beginner's guide hop into the discord ask lots and lots of questions and then jump in choose your favorite protocol and do something to help contribute you know that could be as small as commenting on a governance proposal which is actually a pretty big deal because those proposals are what make all the decisions for the protocol or just using it and giving feedback protocols love getting that kind of feedback and that helps you learn and start to like find your footing find what you're passionate about yeah i'm always happy to be a resource uh so if anyone's on the show um you know feel free to you know dm me on twitter or send me an email always happy here to chat and uh and yeah and then the the class that i was talking about

earlier i think you know i think all it's is a bull market it's busy times but uh i think it's worthwhile making the time to uh to put out good content for people to uh digest because we're really um you know crypto go cyclical right and every cycle there it's a good time to attract new talent in and if we are able to widen that funnel and make that on-ramp easier for people to either just you know uh buy crypto or just or participate in the industry like that would be a great it would set up a great uh grounding for the next generation and the next wave um and i think uh you know looking across i think the um it's already we're already seeing

improvements like you know all of you guys and uh you know back in them back in 2017 like you know we're like just getting started and so look it's been only what two or three years and uh i think we're making really great progress so yeah very optimistic i think we spent a lot of time today talking about the difficulties right but i think the biggest best thing to do is talk about the good things of why we all do this in the first place right like it's you know most crypto industries is 24 7 sure but also you have flexible working hours right you um you know you meet great people who are you know risk takers and really are like the best in their field and come out and have interesting ideas like

your job will not bore you it is you know the fundamental thing i'm trying to tell people all the time right it's like it's an exciting industry that is growing you're on the forefront of like innovation technology you're disrupting all these great things yes of course it'll be challenging right and and there's things we can do to help but fundamentally i think if the message i hope everyone could receive is you know the risk is worth it right in the end of the day you go home you go to sleep by night you feel like i feel proud by the work i do i'm happy with what i'm contributing and great friends and there's a thing about crypto that is so different than traditional markets like my clients my competitors my peers are like my actual friends could we just fundamentally understand each other on the same level

versus you know in traditional markets like you know i would never go hang out with my competitors the same way i do now right um so i think that's really great and then you know and and that's probably the most exciting thing also about what we do um so you know if there's you know there's resources out there to support um you but you know fundamentally i think um if there's one thing to focus on is just um no matter the risk at the end of the day if you you take the plunge you start people will help you and um it's always easier than you think to get through this stuff yeah no exactly very well said amy and i think

um for anyone to succeed in this field as somebody who really believes in it and i think for people who who actually enjoy it right it is um it could be challenging it could be demanding but we're all in it and you know i wake up every day loving the space because there's so many things happening so many new things you never i always say there's never a dull day in crypto things will happen and there's so much innovation coming out of space and i am in a in a field with the brightest minds and i just feel so lucky um and and i i hope more people will feel that way and and for the women who out there who are thinking about this like amy said right um it's perhaps not as reiki risky or

crazy as you think it is um and we are all here to be your resources and you know i hope we do more of this to get a much bigger community and to just make a stance to say that we are here we're your resource for anyone else who wants to join us i think that's an important message by the end of the day i'm really just if you aren't just in the space and then you should give it a shot i mean the worst case is not so bad great yeah and earlier when amy said you will not be bored i second that you will not feel good it's definitely my favorite thing about crypto um that's why i can't imagine covering anything else ever again because i just

um enthralled pretty much every day and i love it so our video cut out right as i was about to wrap up so i just want to thank the panelists again for discussing a topic that many others are not willing to discuss publicly and also for their great ideas and getting more women interested in crypto and bringing them into the industry to learn more about amy and fireblocks annabelle and amber group mia and dragonfly alexis and open check out the show notes for this episode unchained is produced by me laura shin with help from anthony yoon daniel ness and mark murdock thanks for [Music] listening

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