So far in our ’12 days of Cryptomas’ feature series we’ve made a point of covering aspects of the market that went under the radar as the bears rolled over the industry. Considering that, this latest episode will surely fit the criteria as DailyCoin takes a look at some of the women in crypto that have risen to the highest heights the Web3 and DeFi industry has to offer.
If ladies are dancing on the ninth day of Cryptomas, it’s surely in celebration of those women in the industry who have led by example.
The women you’re about to read about have propelled the entire ecosystem to incredible heights, and continue to work and innovate in an industry largely dominated by men. They are superstars, and they are the leading ladies of crypto.
1. Meltem Demirors
When Meltem Demirors joined the crypto ecosystem in 2015, the industry was just starting to become relevant. Still, Ms. Demirors took the plunge, as it were, and has built an extraordinary career for herself.
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She spent the first years of her crypto career building investment firms and advising some of the most innovative companies. Since then, she’s gone on to become the chief strategy officer of CoinShares, which is a financial firm in London that’s focused on alternative assets such as digital currencies.
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As the chief strategy officer of CoinShares, Ms. Demirors plays a pivotal role in deciding what assets are invested in and how each transaction should be made. Under her oversight, CoinShares has become a behemoth in its own right, and the company now manages around a billion dollars in assets.
Source: Meltem Demirors’ Twitter
2. Elizabeth Stark
Marvel has Tony Stark, so it’s only fair that crypto gets Elizabeth Stark. The only difference, however, is that Elizabeth Stark isn’t a tech whiz kid that can build flying humanoid robots. Instead, she’s a co-founder and CEO of Lightning Labs, one of the most innovative companies in crypto.
Her job may not be as exciting as defeating Thanos or building Jarvis, but her role is extremely important in how the crypto industry has and will continue to evolve.
As Co-Founder of Lightning Lab, Ms. Stark was one of the first to try to solve the Bitcoin scalability problem. According to Ms. Stark, Bitcoin cannot become a global payment solution if it doesn’t fix its transaction speed, and this was part of the inspiration for the Lightning Network—a Layer-2 solution that aims to tackle that issue.
Since Lightning Labs was released in 2018, the network’s success has been due, at least in part, to Ms. Stark’s extraordinary work ethic and vision.
Source: Bitcoin Wiki
3. Lavinia Osbourne
There are many ways to make an impact in crypto. You could work on the investment side and drive capital towards crypto like Meltem Demirors, or you could build great tech like Elizabeth Stark. Or, you could be like Lavina Osbourne and influence even more people to take advantage of crypto’s opportunities.
Lavina Osbourne isn’t just a crypto influencer, she’s also an entrepreneur whose impact has shown just how far women can go in the Web3 ecosystem. Right now, she’s the host of Women in Blockchain Talks, a space for women to come and share knowledge and insights about the blockchain. She’s also the founder of NFT marketplace Crypto Kweens, which has become a favored platform for female artists and entrepreneurs to share their work.
Crypto is one of the most male-dominated industries in the world, but the work and impact of people like Ms. Osbourne are turning that tide. By building women-focused products and hosting female-only blockchain spaces, Osbourne has introduced hundreds of women to crypto, and one can only hope that she continues to be successful.
Source: We Are Tech Women
4. Caitlin Long
Before getting into crypto, Caitlin Long had a fairly stable career on Wall Street. However, when an article on how to purchase and hold Bitcoin landed in her inbox in 2012, Long claims she immediately understood the potential of Bitcoin.
From then on, Long has made a tremendous impact in the world of crypto and works to make the securities market safer and more honest by issuing these securities on the blockchain.
In her long crypto career, Caitlin Long has held a myriad of different positions. She was once the chairwoman of Symbiont, a crypto startup. She was a Co-Founder of the Wyoming Blockchain Task Force. She’s also served as the Chairperson of WyoHackathon, a nonprofit hackathon.
At press time, Long serves as the CEO of Avanti Financial, a financial firm with interests in assets from both the traditional and alternative financial markets. Aside from leading important crypto firms, Ms. Long has also used her influence to create a friendly regulatory environment for crypto in her home state of Wyoming.
Source: Caitlin-Long.com
5. Preethi Kasireddy
Preethi Kasireddy is undoubtedly one of the most interesting women in crypto. First, she’s a software engineer who claims to be largely self-taught.
It’s this passion for learning that took her from software engineer to one of the most important women in crypto.
Kasireddy first got involved in blockchain in 2014, when she worked at a16z. At the time, a16z was making a sizable investment in Coinbase, and that was when she saw crypto’s potential. Since then, she’s been very active in the crypto community and has shared her crypto engineering knowledge far and wide.
Today, Kasireddy is the founder and CEO of Trustory, a social media network that aims to provide a powerful platform for people to debate issues and stake crypto at the same time.
Source: LinkedIn
6. Yi He
Binance could be considered the most important institution in crypto right now, so it’s only natural that the most important woman on the team of superstars that built the exchange would make this list.
The deep asymmetry between Yi He’s present career and her previous one is one of the most interesting things about her. Before Co-Founding Binance with Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, Ms. He was a TV anchor for a China Travel TV Channel. After leaving her job in TV, she went on to co-found OKCoin, one of the biggest exchanges in the world.
She eventually left OKCoin and joined the Chinese mobile video tech firm Yixia Technology as their VP. Yi He met CZ at OKCoin and built a cordial relationship with him. That relationship would make huge ripples in what was to come in her life.
In 2017, after working at Yixia Technology for sometime, Ms. He got a call from CZ. He told her about his Binance idea and asked her to do some consulting work for him. She said that she did the consulting for free because she believed in CZ and the company that he was building. She eventually joined Binance as a co-founder and became the company’s chief marketing officer.
Despite being a pivotal part of Binance’s success, Yi He does her best to stay away from media attention.
Source: Twitter
7. Cathie Wood
Some of the most extraordinary people in crypto are those with years of experience in traditional finance or traditional tech. Cathie Wood is just that kind of person.
Before founding Ark Invest and going into crypto, Ms. Wood worked in traditional finance for more than thirty years. She worked as an assistant economist, a chief economist, a portfolio manager, a managing director, and a chief investment officer.
In 2014, Cathie set up her stock investment company and called it Ark Invest. She named the company after the biblical Ark of Covenant.
Ark Invest is known as one of the most innovative firms in the world. It usually focuses on blockchains, energy storage, DNA sequencing, and even AI. Anything with the potential to disrupt industries.
Source: Forbes
On the Flipside
- The misdealings of Caroline Ellison, the crash of the Milady Maker NFT project, and the infamous “Crypto Queen” Ruja Ignatova have sullied the position of women in crypto, making that glass ceiling all the harder to break.
Why You Should Care
The women in this article are at the forefront of innovation in the crypto industry. Their contributions to the ecosystem have made it even more resilient, and they are great examples for people who would like to get involved in Web3.
Read more of our holiday feature series:
Find the previous iteration in the series here:
4 Metaverses to Visit This Holiday Season
