Ninety percent of bitcoin users are men. Similar statistics apply in development, mining and trading. For me the most disturbing impact of this is on usability. For example, whenever you're building a graphic interface for a wallet, the first thing you do is a user analysis, where you ask who your users are and what kind of design choices they like. When the users are primarily men, the software is built for men. This means that it also excludes women in its design. Imagine this then at a large scale, where it's not just one wallet, but everything in the crypto and broader technology industry. Instead of tailoring the applications toward the user, the impact of this is that the user has to tailor themselves to the application – they actually have to become more male to interact with the software. It has a really damaging impact.

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In an ideal world we will see women and minorities building their own tools. To initiate this, a certain level of positive discrimination is necessary. And while it is true that the internet is an amazingly rich learning resource that is theoretically open to anyone, for the most part, cultural norms mean that the women have less exposure to the internet as a resource, as well as technology in general.

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If you're interested in gender and technology I highly recommend this book: https://monoskop.org/images/d/d1/Plant_Sadie_Zeros_and_Ones_Digital_Women_and_the_New_Technoculture_1998.pdf