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Women Are Tired of Hearing Men Talk About Crypto. I’m Tired of Women’s Ignorance

Are women missing out on a chance to have more power by not bothering to learn?

By DenisaPublished 2 years ago 6 min read
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Photo by Liza Summer on Pexels

I’ll be honest.

I’ve always thought cryptocurrency was way too complicated for me.

All the terminology terrified me — I mean, what the hell even is this Web3? Is it a new Dark Net, a place you can only access by plugging special technology into even more special technology just to start decoding secret messages?

(Yes, I’m aware that’s not precisely how Dark Net works. A year ago, it was a different story though.)

And why are NFTs even worth anything? It’s just a code. It’s not like I can hang up the painting in my living room to look at it when I feel blue. Do I log into my special Bitcoin account from time to time to admire the picture of a cat on my virtual shelf? You know, like in a game?

No, I didn’t think so.

This all sounded pointless, complex, and disconnected from the real world. What’s more, the way men talked about it annoyed the hell out of me — “Dude, the gas fees are so high. You’ll need more ETH to buy this NFT. Layer 2 might be a great solution though.”

Gas fees for what? It’s an icon on a computer, for God’s sake! It’s not like it’s going to come in the post next Monday!

You get the picture.

Two weeks ago, an opportunity to write about crypto popped up. “Crypto?” I crinkled my nose. “But all I know about crypto is that Bitcoin is not a real coin!”

Fortunately for me, I’ve decided a long time ago that as long as an opportunity seems at least a little plausible, I should give it a go and say a big excited YES.

Thus the journey of learning about crypto started…

Knowledge Is the Best Kind of Power You Can Have

I browsed the internet. I googled terms.

While eating lunch, I watched YouTube videos about the basics of crypto instead of the usual 5 BookTok Romance Novels I Read In 24 Hours vlogs (which are, by the way, lots of fun).

And guess what? As soon as you wrap your mind around the concept, it’s actually not so bad! I know what many of those weird-sounding terms mean now, including ETH, NFT, Exchange, Ledger, Blockchain… oh, and even the dreaded gas fees!

How long has it taken me to learn this? Two weeks. I’ve spent a maximum of eight hours total learning about crypto, and I kind of know what this is all about now. That’s eight hours that might earn me lots of money in the future.

I even understand why NFTs are so valuable. It’s all about trading, really. It’s not so different from regular investing, and it actually has many benefits regular investing does not.

The point is, the moment you start learning about something is the moment you start gaining opportunities. Crypto is on the rise, and if I invest now, I might just as well thank myself later in life.

If I miss the opportunity by remaining ignorant, however…well, then I can keep complaining about men’s crypto-talk while losing on a great alternate reality where I’m loaded from amazing passive income.

That’s maybe glorifying it, but you know what I mean. The more knowledge you have, the more opportunities arise. The more opportunities you say YES to, the more chance there is of improving your life.

The amazing thing about all this? When you begin to understand something, you find out it’s actually not so hard after all.

The hardest thing is getting started.

Are Women Sleeping on an Opportunity to Gain More Power?

Men have been in power for hundreds of years, and while women have gained lots of power in the last century, there’s still a big gap in some areas.

The matter is complex, and much of this gap is not women’s fault. Some of it is, though.

I’ve seen it, I’ve heard it, I’ve read about it. Many women wave their hands and turn away when men start talking about investing, trading, finance in general… and now crypto.

The moment men put on that business voice and throw around jargon like they know it all, your mind can easily turn their words into “blah, blah, and blah, blah, blah. Oh, bla? Nah, blah-blah.”

We like to call them mansplainers. Many of them are. Some of it is just passion and a genuine desire to share it, however. Listening and learning are sometimes better than rolling your eyes, especially when it comes to a topic you don’t know much about.

I should know. I’ve done both. Take a guess at which option was more productive overall.

How do men gain the biggest amount of power? By becoming rich. How do the rich amass their wealth? Well, lots of things, but one of the big ones are trading and investing.

When you learn how to invest efficiently, your money doesn’t just sit in a bank. It creates more of itself. The more efficient assets you have, the more money you gain without having to do much, and the richer you become.

The sad truth is that even today, only 28% of women in the UK invest as opposed to 46% of men. Fidelity’s 2021 Women and Investing Study has shown that 33% of women overall think of themselves as investors and only 9% of them think they are better investors than men.

Evidence shows they just as well might be, though. Women get better investment returns — some research shows a difference of up to 1%.

So if we’re good at investing, why aren’t more of us doing it? And if we’re good at investing, why aren’t we using this to gain more power in the crypto field? Less than 5% of crypto entrepreneurs are women.

According to a CNBC article from 2021:

“Cryptocurrency is a 21st century financial instrument with a very 20th century problem: not enough women. Twice as many men as women invest in cryptocurrency (16% of men vs. 7% of women), according to CNBC and Acorn’s Invest in You: Next Gen Investor survey, conducted in partnership with Momentive.”

CNBC gives us even more data:

“Women are lagging behind men in their rates of cryptocurrency investing, just as they have historically struggled to keep pace with men in more traditional investment verticals. In fact, in the new survey data, the gender disparity in crypto matches or exceeds the gender gaps in ownership of exchange-traded funds (14% of men vs. 7% of women), individual stocks (40% of men vs. 24% of women), mutual funds (30% of men vs. 20% of women), real estate (36% of men vs. 30% of women), and bonds (14% of men vs. 11% of women).”

There you have it. We’re behind in those categories of finance that often tend to make people rich and powerful.

If we want more money and power, if we want to balance out the field…maybe more of us should step up.

It’s Time to Join the Conversation

Nothing is black-and-white.

There are women who love crypto and are genuinely curious about it from the get-go, and there are women who don’t want to have anything to do with it.

I was the latter, and the only things holding me back were fear and laziness.

My partner knows a lot about cryptocurrency and investing, so I always kind of thought, “well, he knows this stuff. He’ll show me the basics and he’ll be in charge of the money.”

This is an extremely unproductive way of thinking. When you rely on somebody else to have the necessary knowledge for you, you’re automatically losing the power over your financial life, which in turn impacts your actual life.

The reason many women don’t invest — both in crypto and in stocks and shares — is that we don’t bother to go and get the knowledge.

Maybe instead of waving our hands and rolling our eyes at men for their interest in Bitcoin, we should be bothered by our own ignorance.

Maybe it’s time for us to join the conversation.

Maybe it’s time to start learning.

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About the Creator

Denisa

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  • Jay LeTron Dobbins2 years ago

    I would invest in a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) first. They tend to have a more stable history.

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