Young woman shows her smartphone with with Bitcoin.Studio shot
Updated Nov 3 with additional quotes
What will bring crypto back to the giddy heights of November 2021, when — briefly — a single Bitcoin cost $65,000 USD? Maybe it’s women, suggests OG venture capitalist and famous cryptocurrency cheerleader Tim Draper.
“Long-term, it’s gonna be all about the women,” Draper told me today at Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal. “Women control 80% of retail spending, and they are only one of six Bitcoin wallets.”
He might be right.
Women represent a lucrative and underserved market for fintech service providers, says Leigh Cuen, tech writer and co-author of a research report on crypto and women. Her research indicates that typically, women who use crypto use it for four key purposes: saving, freelance income, and gaining valuable skills in an emerging field.
Another core reason Cuen cites: freedom.
“Everything that allows us to have control over money and the value of our work is important,” a woman in Venezuela said. “It is the possibility of having money saved without passing through the hands of the husband and without having to go to the bank to sign.”
The current slide for crypto in general and Bitcoin specifically has been painful for HODLers, the hold-on-for-dear-life true believers who have bought and continue buying Bitcoin. The original and still most valuable cryptocurrency now trades around the $20,000 mark, having lost more than half of its value.
Their faith will be rewarded, Draper suggests, as people start to finally get it.
“The HODLers, the passionate people realizing Bitcoin is an anthropological leap forward, they’re the ones who are buying now and hanging in there.”
The people who caused both the spike and the crash?
Speculators who bought in on the upswing, and dumped it all at the same time as they sold off their tech stocks, Draper says.
Women — and retailers — will be at the front of Bitcoin’s return to greatness, he says.
“Once the retailers realize that they can save 2% by accepting bitcoin, and once women realize they get their food, their clothing, and their shelter all in bitcoin, they’re not going to want government coins,” Draper says.” They’re going to want bitcoin, they’re going to want something that is decentralized, open, transparent, global … they’re gonna want a currency that is just better, that will go up in value … versus one that you have to get rid of.”
Retailers certainly want to save money, which is why the EU has capped credit card swipe fees and there’s currently legislation under consideration in the United States for something similar. And people generally want to save money as well.
Whether women in general — or non-crypto participants overall — care about decentralization or non-governmental currencies, time will tell. What is clear, however, is that many female crypto purchasers own Bitcoin not primarily for retail purchases but for the same reason as many men in the space: the opportunity for financial growth, plus risk management from the fiat currency economy.
“Portfolio diversification,” says entrepreneur Katherine Champagne when I asked why she was holding Bitcoin. As far as growth for the future is concerned, she’s open to options: “How do you define the future? Five years? Ten years? I wouldn’t be holding it if I didn’t think I would get some returns …”
There’s certainly been an increase in women engaging with crypto recently: Indian exchange BuyUcoin recorded a rise of about 140% this year among female users, while Australian exchange BTC Market said that female participation jumped 172%, compared to just 80% for me.
If that continues, Draper might have a point. More people in the space — whatever gender they are — makes for more buyers, more users, and more growth.
The other force that Draper believes will propel Bitcoin into the future?
The inflation that is plaguing much of the world right now.
“Bitcoin will start being recognized as an inflation hedge,” he says. “I remember my Dad giving me $1,000,000 Confederate dollars. I said ‘How much is this worth?’ and he started laughing … ‘it’s not worth anything.’”
Fiat currencies are going to go that way, Draper says.
Which, if true, means that the US dollar, the Euro, and other major currencies will continue to be devalued. And, if that happens, people might indeed flee to crypto. Hopefully for billions of people whose lives depend on reliable and available currencies for living their lives, that prediction does not come to pass.
If people do flee to crypto, it’ll most likely be for very simple, prosaic, and common-sense reasons:
“Bitcoin, for me, hasn’t been about shit posting on Twitter and flexing my maximalist muscles,” says Allie Eve Knox in a Cita Press report . “It has strictly been about getting paid in a safe and quick manner. That’s what bitcoin is to me. It is the money I use to put food on the table, not to stroke my ‘hard money’ ego.”
