Investment strategist Lyn Alden discusses her own Bitcoin journey, encountering skeptics and the industry’s male bias.
A recent survey conducted by OnMessage Inc. in the state of Texas found that men are 30% more likely to own bitcoins than women. And most who have attended a Bitcoin meet will have noticed a predominantly male attendance. In the bitcoin space, we often say “Bitcoin is for everyone”, however, statistics show lopsided participation.
But bitcoin East for everyone, right? So what can we do to make Bitcoin culture more accessible to women?
There are many potential paths, but the one I choose to follow is to learn and tell the stories of women in bitcoin. And where better to start than with Lyn Alden, the founder and CEO of Lyn Alden’s Investment Strategy?
With a background in finance and engineering, Alden brings a unique and humble perspective to the Bitcoin space. She mainly focuses on the analysis of macroeconomics, investment research and monetary systems. She has been interviewed on numerous podcasts, including “What Bitcoin has done,” “The Pump Podcast,” “Parts Storiesand others. His work has been featured or quoted in The Wall Street Journal, Time’s Money Magazine, and The Huffington Post, among many other publications.
Below, find Alden’s answers to a few questions about his background and the evolution of Bitcoin culture.
How did you first hear about Bitcoin and what specifically attracted you to it?
I first heard about it around 2010 when someone I knew was running it on his gaming computer. It sounded neat to me at the time and I planned to look into it more, but life was hectic and I never got into it. Then, a few years later, I tracked him down, and while he still seemed neat, the exchanges seemed rather sketchy. Again, I had planned to get into it more, but due to the complexity of life, I put it on the back burner.
During bitcoin’s bull run in 2017, I was running an investment research firm, so I finally took the time to dig deeper and wrote a public article about it in November of that year. My article discussed the merits of the technology, but showed skepticism about the price after the year’s euphoric price surge, and I passed it on as an investment. This turned out to be a good idea, as bitcoin crashed and then crashed for the next two and a half years. However, this time I didn’t repeat my previous mistake – I kept researching during the bear market, and eventually bought it, then kept learning and buying more.
What were the reactions of your colleagues to your belief in Bitcoin? And how have you seen this change over time?
I don’t usually talk about it too much. A friend of mine got into it partly because of me, but most people I know are relatively uninterested in it. However, I have a large following for my public writings, and so I have used this platform to share my research on bitcoin, among all the other topics I write about.
Some of my audience was (and still is) skeptical about it or outright dislikes the fact that I’ve been writing so much about it for years, and they’d rather I didn’t. Other parts of the audience were thrilled and learned a lot. Most people can’t spend thousands of hours studying something like bitcoin and so instead I can do it as part of my profession and write about it so the knowledge sharing evolves a bit better. And in doing so, I also attracted a readership of people who have known bitcoin longer than I have, who might be interested in my articles on other topics.
How do you generally respond to bitcoin scorners?
People don’t have a lot of bandwidth. There are probably a lot of things I’m dismissive of that I shouldn’t be doing, but I can’t be hyper-focused on everything at once. As a macroeconomics and monetary systems analyst and someone who also has an engineering background, bitcoin fits well into my field of research and focus, but for many people it’s not the case. It’s easy to dismiss, especially for people in developed markets with reasonably well-functioning banking systems. For many of them, it looks like a solution in search of a problem. Many of them focus on important things that I despise instead.
The only thing that doesn’t make sense to me is people who don’t like it and yet don’t know about it. It’s usually an ideological issue, or an ego issue, or a misunderstanding about it related to the energy and associated moral panic that the media has often fanned the flames.
In your opinion, why is it important to close the gender gap in Bitcoin interest and adoption?
I consider bitcoin to be a very useful form of global money, and money is for everyone. It’s that simple. Therefore, it is natural to want to include underrepresented people in Bitcoin spaces.
At the very least, if, for example, a Bitcoin dating is 80% male or more, it’s worth asking why. It’s not necessarily a negative or surprising thing; interest in sound monetary economics and computer science are two areas that have biased men for some time, statistically. So, I am aware of this starting point when it comes to Bitcoin. Nevertheless, we can wonder why men seem to find this technology more relevant than women, and observe that most content producers are men.
Some women feel a little out of place in male-dominated spaces, just as some men feel a little out of place in female-dominated spaces. Like somehow it’s not “for them” even though they’re not banned in any way. For the people (often men) who make bitcoin education materials, do they naturally make that material for people like them, and therefore perhaps lack the means to share the information that might be more conducive to women or women? other people who are not necessarily like them?
While I don’t think it’s a problem for any given space, including Bitcoin spaces, to be rather male-dominated (or in other cases, female-dominated), I do think it’s worth worth thinking about underrepresented groups and seeing what can be done to include more people in general. After all, most people who love bitcoin think it will continue to grow in importance and touch more people’s lives over time, and it’s for everyone. The challenge and the opportunity, then, is to find more ways to communicate this idea to many different types of people.
When I first heard Alden speaks at Bitcoin 2021 in Miami, I remember thinking she was absolutely brilliant and communicated with a humility not common in any industry. What is more impressive than his intellectual prowess is his commitment to financial literacy education, especially as it relates to Bitcoin. His writing has had a positive impact on countless people, helping to grow Bitcoin adoption.
Kudos to Alden for taking the time to offer his thoughts on this topic, and for anyone curious, Bitcoin is, in fact, for everyone.
This is a guest post by Becca Bratcher. The opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.
