Wednesday was International Women’s Day, but that appears to have escaped Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, who tweeted a photo of himself and a group of all-male, all-white crypto cofounders. Critics were swift.
Hosted a great “build back better” dinner in NY with some crypto company founders. This crypto industry has plenty of strong and compliant companies (even if the headlines would make one think otherwise).
— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) March 8, 2023
Doing the work year after year isn’t always sexy, but it’s important.… https://t.co/DwblPKes0V pic.twitter.com/sLx2nWuYuD
Several users pointed out the irony of hosting a “build back better dinner,” as Armstrong billed it, on International Women’s day without including any female founders who are also making an impact in the space.
If you need some amazing crypto female leaders to invite to future dinners that are to “building back better” happy to give some recs! Happy belated international women’s day!
— Clara 📪 Tsao.eth (@tweetclarita) March 9, 2023
The list of attendees included the CEO of AAVE, Stani Kulechov; Compound CEO Robert Leshner; the CEO of Messari, Ryan Selkis; the cofounder of Paradigm, Fred Ehrsam; Paxos CEO Charles Cascarilla; and Jonathan Levin, cofounder of Chainalysis.
Yes, a group of privileged white men are going to save the world.
— August V (@AugustCohen4) March 9, 2023
Incredible revelation, bro.
The photo called to mind last year when, as many other companies were celebrating International Women’s Day, Bain Capital Ventures partner Stefan Cohen tweeted a picture of the company’s seven-person, all-male crypto team. Because Bain is one of the world’s biggest investors in startups, many people raised concerns about blind spots an all-male team might have when investing its $560 million crypto fund.
The tweet was roundly criticized, and Cohen eventually deleted it and apologized.
But the tone-deaf blunders reveal a more systematic problem when it comes to diversity in crypto.
A survey published last July found that all CEOs of the 32 biggest crypto companies in the world were men, and several of them had no women on their boards. In the startup world, companies founded by women received only 1.9% of venture funding last year, a drop from 2.4% in 2021.
Some traditions are so embedded in culture it would take a biblical leveling for us to undue them.
— cokie (@cokiehasiotis) March 8, 2023
In crypto, that’s men posting photos of inspirational people in crypto featuring exclusively white men on international women’s day
may this holy traditional survive us all
