Women in Crypto - TOKEN2049 Singapore 2022

thanks everybody for coming out it's a really exciting time this is a huge conference so and thanks for finding the stage because I think that wasn't necessarily easy I'm super excited today to be talking with Gracie Chen of bitget and Irene Zhao um so you know let's get started and I just want to talk a little bit about um how are you guys how things may have changed for women in crypto from pre-pandemic to now and of course the pandemic times also included the huge run up Bitcoin to 69 000 lots of enthusiasm so a lot changed in crypto but did anything change for women from say 2019 till now in terms of opportunities in terms of how many are in the industry so Irene do you want to start oh okay um yeah thank you for the question but uh I guess my my personal experience is more towards the fact that um the crypto industry or the web 3 Industry as a whole we uh so mobile like we all work remotely and that's very adaptive in terms of this pandemic or post pandemic period so um the fact that women might spend more time in family and yet we we can Empower those women who need more time to spend with their family or or other as well as working together and the fact that this industry is a very remote uh driven kind of working style I think that's really cool and that's what I really love about our industry yeah I guess that's something I observe through the pandemic but along the way we think maybe past five five years or 10 years uh women have more say in working space we see a lot of more growth in terms of like women who are interested in stem projects and uh that's a general Trend not really affected a lot by the pandemic that's basically my opinion okay thank you actually I got into crypto earlier last year so like panami already started so I would say oh I'm about here hey yeah so I got into crypto earlier last year we're like pandemic already started to be honest earlier last year there are not many females in the crypto space and that's why I can say that gender really helps me a lot to get really started in crypto space because I came from a Creator background I have been a creator for the past six years now I have about half a million followers across Twitter Instagram and um Tick Tock but when I just started which is last year there are not many female in the space at Academy at the CMO of a D5 projects and I was the one who is talking about D5 protocols doing all the amas on Twitter and on YouTube with a lot of influencers and people find it quite fascinating that they really rarely say or see many female in the crypto space but I think because of the nft hype which happened about like July when we saw just bought their first crypto Punk and after it got really really popular and from that I see a lot of females coming into the web 3 space and they have a lot of like female kills and my female friends who said oh how can I get into that three so excited so even though we are still in uh like I would say a bear Market but I feel like people are so excited I look at how many people come in for the crypto events and I feel like um social media is really going to bring Mass adoption to the crypto space okay great and welcome Annabelle who fought off the F1 road closures to be here so um we're just talking about what's changed for women in crypto and say the past three years so maybe pre-pandemic to now yeah sure and uh apologies for being late I literally ran 100 meters fighting off the F1 road closures but I think that gets um you know that goes to say how incredibly popular and crowded this conference stage is it's great to see everybody here in Singapore um I we moved here last year uh sort of in the middle of the pandemic and before then we were in Hong Kong um and I think back to your question uh I think for the first maybe two years we're all working virtually we're talking to each other on Twitter on Discord on Telegram and I think that actually gave a lot of opportunities for everybody to participate you didn't need to be um you didn't need to be a so-called crypto participant right there are so many new ways of of entering into space um so I actually had a female intern uh who was born after 2000s and she joined me remotely uh over last summer I was able to do a lot of research for for us and now she's fully integrated into the community and I think this is this would have been difficult if this sort of virtual community wasn't even more prompted by the pandemic and the way we interact with each other and I think just in terms of how the market grew we are a more of a financial service provider within crypto and then we just saw influx of capital that came in through the pandemic on the back of easy money and and all the different policies but you know I think this wave of bull market also attracted so many talents uh be a female or male into the space and I think we are seeing the results of it okay thank you and so I'm interested to hear where you all think that women are making the most gains and where there's kind of the most ground to make up I know Irene you mentioned web3 so are there any specific areas where a lot of women have come in or maybe areas where they're not as prevalent man barrels of entry for web 2 people to get into what three space is the accessibility because there are so many crypto uh dragons that are so difficult to understand like Layer Two defy CK row up and like just like it's super difficult for the like web two people to understand and therefore I think if we can make the like the uh the concept super simple for people to understand we can make the platform very easy to use and this is what also what we do at so cool we're trying to build a super easy to use uh interface for the web to social media influencers to get into the web 3 Space by create their own nfp's collections either just buy like a click of a button they can create their own nfts and they can engage uh with the their uh their followers oh great Gracie what do you think uh I think for example in bigot actually we're a very women-driven kind of leadership company um you you probably won't believe that we have actually more women in the leadership role than men and we have women working as CEO CMO and CPO P for a product and for marketing these are all women uh of course we have a lot of men in the team as well but we are very like uh in terms of the ratio of the gender we are very neutral I guess that's one gang I can see from the space but I do see a lack of women in especially stem science technology and Mathematics kind of role or the the the the industrial discipline I actually studied at MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology and that's a as all you all know that's a famous university full of technology and scientists so I see many much more men in the stem space than women I myself studied Applied Mathematics here in Singapore in the National University of Singapore and when I was studying Applied Mathematics the ratio of women to men is like about two to eight so I think we need more women especially in the stem industry or stem discipline makes sense and Annabelle where are you seeing it well I guess I have to agree with both of you a little bit about myself also studied math at Curry melon which is also a very I would say men male dominated University is changing now though I think the newest class has a 50 of female enrollment which is a very different stats from when I was there um and then and then I went into traditional Finance or and investment Banks is also the same if you look at the trading floor the the MDS of the of the banks um oftentimes there's lack of female representation and even lack of role model to say the least and I think that's what partly what inspired me to maybe pursue something um that's an immersion tag that's newer there's more Level Playing Field in terms of you know you don't need to be you know how old you it doesn't matter how old you are if you're men or women and what you did before it's it's new things everybody had an opportunity um so we saw that maybe in the last two three cycles for for crypto and then and then I think over the last two to three years is in the news cycle then of course there are more and more participants more and more capital and I think a lot of us are trying to build um the easy to use UI ux to onboard more people and this is again the Open Access that Irene was talking about and I was talking about earlier maybe from different perspective um different audience um but whether influencers or people just looking to trade crypto or to have exposure as in terms of an investment I think this is very important and we're still very early and I don't think we're a web three yet right this is a very commonly used term but we're somewhere in between and there's so much to be done but it's good at least all of us are doing it now all of us here Grace Irene USL yourself as well and I think having this more female representation will inspire more women to join the space and having Open Access will naturally include more people so as an example um we recently opened up a JV in Dubai so for Middle East a lot of women are not allowed to even have a bank account and what they did is for their so-called allowance they actually use that to buy into crypto buy into Bitcoin over the years so they actually achieved the sort of dollar cost averaging over the years and they're long-term hodlers and now they have actually accumulated quite a fortune but now they can very easily onboard an account at Amber at Big gather elsewhere right and can continue to manage your wealth that way and and this is you know I guess the most sort of shocking yet heartwarming thing that I see okay yeah it's interesting because I did chemistry as an undergrad at Cornell University and it was the same thing where there were not that many women and so crypto is kind of coming back to that and just like oh I remember this type of thing I want to add one more point I think NFP really helps to get a lot of women into the web 3 space because last year like D5 game five was so popular but girls most of girls they don't really play around with Finance products and they don't really play games but every every girl use social media platforms and we can see a lot of my girlfriends are changing their profile picture into those nft avatars and it's so exciting because they don't really know what is crypto but they know it's nft and they're very excited to try all these kind of new things I feel like nft is really the best way to get like Mass adoption for crypto but after that people get into space and learn what is nft uh what is like D5 what is game five just like nft is the best stepstone for people for girls especially to get into web free space nice so Gracie you recently wrote something about why it would be good for more women to be in crypto so do you want to talk a little bit about what you did yeah of course yeah so I wrote I wrote an op-ed for forecast it's another crypto media uh published about one month ago so we actually examined firstly the profile of the current uh crypto adapters so that profile looks pretty much like a guy and from 25 or like 22 to 59 oh sorry 49 or usually with a bachelor degree of it related uh discipline so that's the general profile of our industry and then We examined what are the reasons preventing more women entering the space especially the leadership role firstly there is a lack of confidence so a lot of time that um just like what we observed in stem um discipline that we were just discussing a lot of people think a lot of women think we can't do it I myself experience that a bit uh while doing my bachelor degree here studying Applied Mathematics because all those guys they just don't study and they can get straight A all the way and I'm immersed in my Central Library all the time yet I still just get like a minus or something so I feel that I'm not smart enough I think that's really a special a very important perspective that is preventing us or or keeping us from studying more about this subject and then even if with uh confidence maybe these three women or these four women standing on the stage we are the so-called confident women in a way in this space there are still a lot of stereotypes outside there so for example when I was raising money for my previous company doing uh doing around a VC and actually there is a venture capitalist talk to me saying directly that we just don't invest in women who are married but not do not have child yet and that's what I was in terms of the live stage at that time um that's I think that's really a slap in the face that there is such a strong stereotype in terms of women giving birth or or rising up a child and they just can't do their work properly so all these reasons contribute to what we are observing right now but I see a lot of improvement and growth within the past few years as well okay so let's focus on kind of the Improvement and growth part of that and where do you think it's an advantage to be a woman in crypto um what's our thought okay actually one great Gracie talks about the stereotypes and and uh like people's perception about women I feel like it's really unfair in the crypto Twitter because I have been a crypto like kol for the past uh two years and when I just started people are questioning it's Irene draw even a real person they feel like I am like some men use my pictures without me knowing it and write all the captions for me on Twitter they literally like even the CEO like one of a very famous we see and even a lot of big names in the crypto space that keep crushing like are you a real person is someone write your tweets or like is someone like you saw pictures I have no no nothing about crypto so I feel like at least it's really the stereotypes men have about women in crypto space they just feel like women cannot be pretty and smart at the same at the same time it's like they're mutually exclusive either you are smart or you are pretty you can't be both and I think like really the industry needs to have like a new perception about we we are really comfortable like confident capable and beautiful women in the space I love that I love that too yeah back to Joanna's question um I actually love the fact that I'm a woman and um I think in terms of working space I do find the fact that soft soft skills or or softened softness is actually the the hardest part or the the strongest part of our power uh and and I sometimes feel the combination of like within the deeper heart or the emotional part you are more of a female driven kind of empathy uh empathetic person and has a big heart for everyone while at the at the same time you are very um straightforward you can make good decisions the combination of the soft power and the strong power uh makes me a whole person and that's what I love for being a woman but I guess men share that similarities as well so there are usually just too much stereotypes and once we can break those stereotypes I think the world is much better and empowering women helps men as well good point I don't know I I would say um I think have a very diverse leadership team is very important um and I think it wasn't really obvious to me because like I said before and in the banks and um and a lot of the tech firms most of the senior leadership is men and I think that's sort of a norm but then um them being in different situations or even myself having to come to the leadership positions and then I think you do see that diversity in how it plays out into managing a company or a project or or inspiring a community and and that itself is is important and I think I make a point to hiring more women not just for the sake of hiring women because they're all incredibly smart beautiful and capable women and they've done great things for the firm but also because um you need a diverse team to maybe on a sales side you have to cater to a very diverse group of clients on the other maybe other management type roles you also need to hear different voices this because we're still in a fast involving industry and every decision you make could be live for that to some point right and you to consider all outcomes all of the different concerns and when it comes to managing a company now we're at almost I think a thousand people and and you need that um you need that diversity and inclusiveness um for the sake of building a better company and offer the sake of you know filling some quota and whatnot but I think successful leadership teams and sexual companies are the ones that actually are diverse and we're half of that equation so like Irene said right women get things done and don't be shy about it so Irene I am kind of curious how do you deal with people like if somebody says are you a real person can you actually be smart you know and I would go online do live amas then haters gonna say just the AI you are not a real person you know the haters gonna hate but the people who love you they just gonna support you and I think it's a good like occasion that all of the great women can come to the stage talk in front of so many people to show that our vision to show that we have the capability to like do what we are good at I think this is a really a great chance for us to come together oh great yeah and it's good we're all talking about this so that that's pretty amazing that you've uh been dealing with that so I guess um Gracie and Annabelle kind of I guess in more traditional roles do you see a lot of times where people kind of assume that you can't do something and how do you deal with that do you just kind of prove them wrong or you know do you say something um I mean sadly that that happens a lot still I think when I first enter the space four years ago until now it still happens but I think what changes maybe my reaction to it um now I think you you just show them what you can do right and they'll realize what you can do before I think um I don't know for especially for Asian women who um have the luxury or advantage of looking a bit younger than we are and um yeah we oftentimes consider maybe less than what we are and um it is important to talk about this type of stereotype but it's also important to show the world what we can do we're here talking about it and I think crypto web3 are able to bring all of us together from different backgrounds we're building so many different things before and we'll probably have never met in in real life otherwise but this brought us together and brings us perspectives and then we have a strong community of women out there showing everybody that we are capable of what we're doing here and I think people people see that and I think inspires women inspires men and it shows hopefully everybody here at the conference and virtually um so I think it is really about just showing them what you what you can do and I think um all of us have come a long way so yeah I totally agree with Annabella in terms of showing what you are capable of um so one thing that drove me into studying Applied Mathematics is actually in my high school that's the best high school in my town and a lot of guys were saying that women just can't study math and I love math and I prove to them and then like MIT it's it's one of the top universities I wanted to go to the university a long time ago and it's until I reached my 30 not young anymore but I still decide to persuade a master's degree over there and approve myself and also back to the previous example I gave about raising fund so I had my child and so I have a three and a half year boy right now so after having my child and actually before having let that child I just like continue raise using the phone and get the money get down and move on yeah so make achievements and prove that you are capable is also it's basically very important but I think one more step further is to build a community to empower more women so before joining bigot I initiated a women kind of empowerment program under the world economic Forum a global Shapers community so it's a program called she shapes so from the name you can tell that we get a lot of a lot of women together and Mentor mentee program so that we have this strong uh very ambitious women here together in a community and we Empower each other when when we have some difficulties in terms of life in terms of working in terms of your next job in terms of whatever industry we talk about them so on the individual level we prove ourselves on the community level we get together like what we have down here to support each other I think that's what we should do and I just wanted to add that back to your earlier question uh what is the advantage of being women is because we work so hard we prove ourselves and I think for everybody who um who's into this industry now probably had to go through slightly more hurdles and now we got here and I would say you know most of the women I mean industry are exceptionally talented maybe for that reason so yeah I think hopefully at some point we need we can stop proving ourselves for the sake of that and just you know having everybody treating us on equal ground but in the same time right we need to um bring more women into space and I think talking about Community having different groups I think we're all very active in in that regard we have the same goal and yeah and I think I'm just very hopeful nice uh just add one more point I think all right we don't really need to go like what's so hard to change people's perception we just need to be there shine and we'll be like role models in the industry to inspire more women to get into the crypto space for example I created like irindo which is the first ever created in the crypto space and there's so many like female killers are like DM me say oh I also want to get into crypto space I also want to launch of nfts I haven't done it before I don't know it can actually be done by a Creator so it's like really just do it and you can Inspire thousands or even millions of females to get into the industry nice and you just provide the easiest the easier to use tool for them to also get into like nfts to create their own versions of Irene does yeah great um so we're getting short on time so I guess one last thing since we have the power panel here um what is what gets each of you excited about crypto right now I know we're in crypto winner people are talking about how you know this is the time when Builders are building but you know Bitcoin is below 20 000 and all that so but what what do you think has a lot of potential or is really exciting right now Annabelle um yeah this is something we think about laud it's not the first time that we're going through uh bear or winter like this so and and we are seeing a lot of teams building and that brings a lot of Hope or comes the next cycle um so out of our our Venture side we are looking to meet a lot of the early stage teams I think building a lot of areas um either that we're familiar ourselves maybe more around the financial applications or even around game five or social whatever that's going to bring more users the the next route and of course on the infrastructure level uh what needs to be built for all of that to be possible how does a billing and user come in um so I think all these categories so from infrastructure to midwear all the way to application Level that we are either building ourselves or want to empower other teams to build um and and I actually kind of like this time a little better there's no more crazy hype evaluation makes sense and people are more you know head down building community building your product and I I think there's going to be a lot of surprises that come our way when the market comes back nice Gracie uh I think this is like a golden window right now in the winter as well as in the bearish market for example we see a lot of other exchanges because bigot is an exchange by the way it's um it's one of the top Global top five derivative exchange ranked by coin Gecko and also Forbes ranked us in top five in terms of the trading volume of real Bitcoin uh trading as well so as an exchange there are a lot of other exchanges doing a hiring phrase or job cutting but we are increasing we are doing a serious expansion right now during the June this year we only have 500 people and that's what we announced our expansion plan in terms of recruiting more people now we have 800 and weigh Target to hit 1000 at the end of this year so during this bearish Market we are actually recruiting a lot of talents so any of you if you're interested in joining exchange talk to me after this so that's that's one thing we we are very excited we really want to be um even like top uh for in terms of Exchange in terms of recruiting more talents and another thing I'm excited about is a concept which is called social trading on the same stage later in afternoon I'm going to talk more about social trading and what we do at bigot stay come come back at 2PM I think 2 to 2 30. sorry for embedding this advertisement here um yeah but we're going to talk about social trading and social trading is a very different concept and it's you probably haven't heard of it a lot at least in our crypto space but it's a it's been a while for traditional financial markets already but that's a very major differentiation factor of beget from other exchanges okay so I wanna we're excited about that concept nice Irene uh I mean we have seen D5 and game five in the last few years but not everyone knows how to use a financial product not Everyone likes to play games but I think everyone wants to Social and I feel like social fun is really the key to bring Mass adoption to crypto but that's how we really haven't seen a killer app in the web 3 social space yet and therefore like so cool we are trying to be the next healer app in the web 3 social space so what we do is we help all the creators to build their own kinds of dial to build their own nft projects on us with just a click of a button it's just so simple to use and we made it um we're gonna launch our platform really soon in two weeks time we hope everyone can come and try SoCo and probably launch your own project on our platform wow sounds good okay I think we need to leave it there Annabelle Gracie Irene thank you so much Alan back to you