The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, went viral this week for releasing a new product in its offering. It wasn’t a token. It was not a structured product. It wasn’t fairness. It was… perfume.
“Crypto by Binance” sounds good, but not in the perfume market. To be fair, the new scent, advertised as “Affordable Affluence” and sold in pop-up shops in Bahrain, is to promote an “Academy” or associated learning and credit course for women who want to learn more about cryptocurrencies.
“If only women knew more about cryptocurrencies, they would definitely participate” is a common hope among blockchain advocates.
The point, though, is this: Cryptocurrency is a multibillion-dollar industry that has gained the attention of the mainstream media and some of the world’s largest financial institutions. To suggest that women’s scarcity is due to their lack of knowledge is, at this point, patronizing. Women know very well that cryptocurrencies exist, and thanks to the unprecedented number of offers today from credible companies, it has never been easier to get into.
So, if the issue of women’s participation in “cryptocurrencies” is not a function of education, then what is it? As the guys say, it’s all about vibes.
These vibes are why so many women don’t want to participate in the cryptocurrency industry, not because cryptocurrencies are difficult to understand. It is not a question of education or money but a question of culture. In other words, Binance, it’s not us: it’s you.
The cryptocurrency industry is a gruesome place to spend time, mired in rhetoric that repels polite people of all stripes. My observation is that there are simply more men than women willing to tolerate it. When women gather in the cryptocurrency space, they tend to do so in pockets. Look to the World of Women Discord and the curatorial leadership of NFT sites like Objkt.com for examples of outsized positivity and female representation. They create islands, but also host vocal participants through active community management.
To attract more women into the industry, I would abandon the masquerade that cryptocurrencies are a technical arms race. It is not. Cryptocurrencies are digital assets that thrive or die, not in the face of technical adversity or due to engineering prowess, but based on how they perform in web-based popularity contests. The illusion that the success of crypto projects is determined by technical merit vanished with Solana’s first half-dozen outages. Or maybe it was before, during the years-long marketing campaign of the perpetually delayed Ethereum merger. In the end, these projects prevailed not because of a technical triumph, but because they had a compelling narrative. In other words, it’s not about educating people. It’s a question of storytelling.
The best cryptocurrency stories involve a positive call to action. The origins of cryptocurrencies are, above all, a popular effort to empower individuals. It’s the same story that has made Instagram, Weight Watchers, and Etsy pages successful successes when it comes to building female-dominated communities. Positivity, self-improvement and self-expression are the hallmarks of the most popular factions of the women’s network. This arc is completely compatible with the philosophy of cryptocurrencies. The origins of bitcoin are entirely in line with a sense of self-determination and empowerment. The way to attract more women is to lean into this rhetoric and cultivate narratives around it.
The most popular sites where women meet on the web have a completely different tone than “Crypto Twitter” or Crypto Reddit subs. Not surprisingly, there is a large delta between the percentage of women among those who own cryptocurrencies in the US (~27%) and those who participate in the online debate (<5%, by my estimates).
If the issue of women’s participation in cryptocurrencies was an easy problem to solve, it would have already been done. The cryptocurrency industry has everything to gain from addressing the issue and representation of the gender gap. Creating a credible alternative to heritage railways for value transfer will not happen if their culture continues to repel large segments of the population. It will take a powerful perfume to fix that stinky reality. A huge change in tone and language is the biggest and most difficult question.
Kathleen Breitman is a co-founder of Tezos. The opinions expressed in Fortune.com comments represent solely the views of the relevant authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.