The Women of Crypto

ELLE talked to 35 women about what it’s like to work in the scarcely regulated, wild, notoriously bro-y industry.

- By Jessica Klein

It’s pouring rain in San Juan, Puerto Rico, but the fire dancers swinging flaming poi outside the warehouse party don’t seem to mind. They’re entertaining cryptocurrency industry executives, blockchain developers, and Burning Man types who’ve flocked to the island in December 2021 for Blockchain Week, in which the island’s crypto bigwigs rent out basement club venues, party-hop in gated communities with top-shelf liquor, mingle with some Miss World contestants (there for the pageant the following week, funded in part by local crypto billionaires), and catch COVID together.

I’d come from a dinner earlier that night where a different set of fire dancers twirled in the background while a founder of a “social impact” blockchain company explained how his team, despite tireless efforts, couldn’t find a qualified woman to fill their chief financial officer role. (They’d hired a white man instead.) Next, it was offto a house party with a driveway full of Tesla charging stations and bros leaning on the balcony. On the journey over, the thirtysomething woman riding with me, a director at an NFT (non-fungible token) music company, mulled over a question she’d been asking herself since joining the male-dominated cryptocurrency industry: “Is this a high point or a low point?” she said, recalling a moment during Art Basel Miami Beach when she’d found herself networking at E11EVEN, a 24-hour “ultraclub,” in the wee hours of the morning with industry colleagues. “I really don’t know....”