The female crypto investors who have quietly grown their fortunes won’t be chartering private jets or flexing on TikTok in their $17m mansions.
As Rachel Siegel puts it, she once worked as a substitute teacher in New York, living paycheck to paycheck. The crypto-savvy content creator, known as Crypto Finally, is a self-described millionaire now. “This all happened over years of me sitting at my computer in my pajamas,” she says. “I just spent a lot of time learning and I think anyone could achieve it.”
A study by eToro Ltd found that women account for only 15 percent of Bitcoin traders, but that number is growing. Even Reese Witherspoon is on board — she announced in September that she had invested in Ethereum, tweeting: “Let’s do this #cryptotwitter.”
Known online by the username Girl Gone Crypto, Lea Thompson fell down the crypto “rabbit hole” in 2011 after watching a friend mine currencies. “I got to experience that really big 2017 bull run,” she says, referring to when the cryptocurrency shot up to 21 times the price from the start of the year. “And that was just so exciting to see — the Bitcoin I had bought went up to $20,000.” The Seattle investor had never seen a return that big: “I felt hooked.”
It is high-stakes and high-risk to invest in crypto. Every success story also contains people who have lost their savings and homes. A lot of the exceptions who do strike it rich use their YouTube channels and social media to flaunt their expensive homes, luxury cars, and extravagant holidays as a way to sell a dream of wealth. Men, however, tend to make up the majority of these figures.
According to LA-based Wendy O, she has already acquired her first million dollars. Wendy says she realized the dream of becoming a stay-at-home mom and never being stressed about money was a reality when she realised that she would no longer worry about finances. Her trading earnings led her to pay for groceries and bills in 2018, when she stopped working in the HIV/AIDS healthcare field.
“I grew up very, very poor and lost my dad when I was 11,” she says. “My mum and my two sisters and I shared a one bedroom in a relative’s house until I was like 18, but now I take care of my family.”
In 2017, when Wendy’s daughter was just a year old, she became an investor. Instead of trading stocks, she opted to trade cryptocurrency since she lacked the $25,000 needed to open a brokerage account. Around the end of that year, she had spent approximately $1,000 on bitcoin — which is now roughly three times as valuable.
There are major differences between how men and women invest in the UK, according to Sara Trojanowska (AKA AltCoin Sara). According to her, online stereotypes associate men with being aggressive and rewarding them for risk-taking, which is the exact opposite of how it is in reality. “I think women are better investors. They take their time, analyse the markets and aren’t led by ego.”
The woman claims she splashed out on crypto after watching her partner get into the market, but didn’t understand the market enough to invest wisely. The learning curve was steep. She says she is now financially free, but she has another goal of becoming a multimillionaire by 30.
While women in crypto enjoy a lot of financial success, they are often derided. Despite the apparent success of online crypto culture (namely the funny memes), sexism is hard to ignore in the industry, as Sara describes.
The problem is all too familiar to Rachel Siegel. She posted a tame selfie of herself in a robe as an NFT in September 2020. In a story titled “Thirst traps explode on NFT platforms, with predictable results,” CoinDesk ran a picture of her in a bikini from her personal social media. After a few days, she recalls, she tweeted something “inane” about Ethereum, to which she received the reply, “shut up slut.”
The same is true for Wendy O. “I’ve had men call me stupid, since the day I started posting content, all the time.” It’s a choice female influencers and investors have to make to participate in crypto culture: Do you join in with the sexism that positions women as morons or sexual objects, or do you call it out and attract even more abuse?
“I didn’t ‘play like one of the guys’ for a very, very long time,” Rachel says. “But I’ve developed a thicker skin now and I’ve started hitting back. I’ve been more accepted because of it.”
As of right now, women who are visible and successful in crypto face a double-edged sword, but ultimately the joke will be on their detractors. With their Bitcoin, Wendy and Rachel aren’t buying Lambos and Bugattis, but they have acquired an unprecedented degree of freedom. Arguably, the real flex is never needing to check your bank account.
