Two months ago, a crypto event in the UK drew mainstream criticism for featuring half-naked models serving sushi on their bodies. While the models were women and men, it was reminiscent of crypto circa 2015. Julian Sawyer, CEO of Zodia Custody, publicly severed  their partnership with event organizer, Copper, and called for integrity in the industry. 

Sadly, questionable events like this are nothing new in crypto. In 2018, an official afterparty during the North American Bitcoin Conference was held at a strip club. Hedonism and sexism aren’t innately web3 problems, but it does run in opposition to the egalitarian promise the technology touts. (Copper didn’t immediately respond to an email asking for comment on their recent event.)

The question isn’t if sexism in web3 exists, but rather, if it’s improved. 

Amanda Wick came to crypto after a decade at the Department of Justice, where she worked as a money laundering prosecutor and senior policy advisor at the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). She joined Chainalysis as the chief of legal affairs and was shocked by the lack of women in the private sector. 

“I had never seen anything like the way tech has treated women,” she said in a recent interview. “You take financial services, you take technology and you take the child of FinTech, and it makes for a very ugly baby which is very anti-women.” 

In 2020, Wick launched the Association for Women in Crypto to help level the playing field. “Most of the prosecutors, analysts and tracers in the U.S. government are women, so I was spoiled,” she said. 

Wick says the industry is going through a maturation. “We’re going to start shaking loose some of the companies that can’t survive the competition,” she said. “If a company has a bad reputation for how they handle women or is known to have a toxic culture, word gets around. Some CEOs, to their peril, underestimate how bad culture can drag their company down.” 

Maintaining integrity and inclusion are critical for the industry to outgrow the “shitcoin shill fest,” Wick said. This means leaning in on the technological breakthroughs and real-world use cases to smooth out the ebbs and flows of the industry’s price volatility. 

While she didn’t coin the term “shitcoin,” Meltem Demirors, the former CSO at CoinShares, has done oh so much for its endearing usage

“Don’t run around giving your money to a bunch of parties that are effectively shitcoins, strippers and blow,” Wick said. 

The issue is complex, for sure, and many women interviewed for this story had positive and negative things to say. While some men can be tone deaf and abusive, others are welcoming and encouraging, they said. Still, there is a long way to go. 

The Association for Women in Crypto funded a report into the state of inclusion in the crypto, blockchain and web3 industry. The research revealed 82 percent of women believe the industry has a harassment problem. Inclusion in crypto scored 43.9 versus 78 in the general tech industry. 

What Wick found most interesting in the data was the substantial proportion of men who also experience harassment. “A lot of men don’t like toxic masculinity and a lot of women don’t like toxic femininity,” Wick said. “We ascribe gender to these things but in reality, they’re just unfortunate traits that nobody wants.”

The good and the bad

Decential spoke to women in the industry about the good and the bad of working in web3. One woman who has worked in crypto since 2013 said she’s been sexually harassed by founders, asked to go in a hot tub on an intake call, and had her knowledge discredited because she’s a woman. Like many women interviewed for this story, she asked to not be named for fear of retaliation. 

“In one specific instance, a senior leader, after hearing my background, looked at my male colleague in the meeting and asked if I knew the difference between testnet and mainnet,” she said. 

On the positive side, she also experienced colleagues refusing to speak on panels or work on projects that don’t include at least two women. “There also hasn’t been a single moment where I’ve had to feel competitive with other women in the industry, other than in business of course,” she said. 

Cecilia Hsueh, the co-founder and CEO of Morph, said she felt many people have dismissed her role as a figurehead, with her gender serving as a novelty to attract attention. She’s observed that pervasive sexism is more prevalent among men who have little experience with female leaders, and has also experienced wonderful support from her male counterparts. 

Hsueh believes female founders stand out and investors are starting to recognize the unique advantages that only female leaders bring to the table. 

“We focus on transforming the complexity of web3 into something more useful and relatable for mass adoption, rather than chasing the next technical milestone that my male counterparts tend to prioritize,” she said. 

There’s something to be said about working alongside a team in a very volatile industry, and how that creates bonding. 

The chaotic nature of web3

Laurisha Cotton was at ConsenSys during the mass layoffs in 2017 and 2018. Marketing jobs were usually the first to be trimmed, while the technical positions, held mostly by men, were spared, she said. ConsenSys didn’t immediately respond to an emailed request for comment. Cotton said the women she worked with from 2018 - 2021 have, for the most part, stayed in the industry, and have gone on to become pioneers in their own right. 

“This is not true for my other crypto jobs,” Cotton said. “I've worked for other web3 companies and about 40 percent of women left - not because of toxic masculinity – but because of the chaotic nature of the industry.”

ConsenSys was Cotton’s first tech job and she believes women can move up faster by staying in web3. “I’ve applied to big tech companies and I never even received an interview,” she said. 

Ann Chai, the design lead and co-founder at Dora, heads a leadership team that is half women, which helps curate a culture of diversity and inclusivity. 

“A lot of the gender discrimination comes from how the early stages of web3 development largely mirrored traditional tech environments, where male dominance was already entrenched,” Chai said. “As a result, initial community structures and networks were formed with limited diversity, making it harder for women to break into these influential circles.”

The women in these circles are often in tangential roles such as marketing, human resources or administration, and there’s still a lack of women in decision-making roles which is preventing wider adoption, she said. “The puzzle will never be solved until all parts of society are a part of the process,” she said. “I do believe, though, that web3 is still a young industry, and I find that it offers more open mindedness.”

Moving on from “move fast and break things” 

While web3 still has work to do to make the space more welcoming for women (and everyday people), signs indicate it’s moving in the right direction. As the technology evolves and becomes more accessible, it’s likely there will be more diversity in the people building it or benefiting from it. 

There are women who speak highly of the space, benefiting by being a woman through free entry to events, the opportunity to speak on panels, and accessing promotions at companies taking inclusion seriously. 

We just need to think twice about sending ‘hey dude’ and ‘thanks man’ DMs and mistaking female leaders for the girlfriends of founders. And definitely ditch serving sushi off semi-nude people.