Top 17 Women in Cryptosphere that You Should Follow

A growing number of women are investing in cryptocurrency as information about this virtual asset and channels for sales and trade become more widespread. 

Because the blockchain technology on which crypto runs involves no third parties such as banks, two people can transact with each other directly 24-7, without having to deal with transfer fees, taxes, and a clearance process that can take a day or two. The identification requirements aren’t as stringent as those required during loan applications, which include income verification and a credit check.

Top 17 Women in Cryptosphere That You Should Follow:

Cryptocurrency and Financial Empowerment

Here are some stats that describe women’s past and current views on cryptocurrency:

• Reluctance

Women had been wary of engaging in crypto systems mainly due to the lack of knowledge about the buying process (30%) and reports about volatility (26%), Bakkt’s most recent U.S. Customer Crypto Survey showed. But the rise in digital literacy has convinced even the most risk-averse of women to dive deep into crypto to the point of rallying others to educate the entire sisterhood of its benefits.

• Discovery and interest

BDC Consulting reported that the hope of improving one’s financial status is the top reason (57%) why women are drawn to the cryptosphere. Curiosity (50%) and the dream of financial independence (44%) are the two other leading factors.

Spouses, life partners, friends, and work colleagues led the list of factors (37%) that triggered women’s interest in cryptocurrency. Other contributors included frequent news reports about crypto and employment in a crypto-related job. 

• Ownership

In a 2021 Pew Survey, only 19% of U.S.-based women (aged 18 to 29 years old) invested in crypto, or about half of the investors in the American male population (43%). 

Of the female crypto owners, a majority (70%) prefer to buy and hold on to it instead of taking part in crypto-trading. Bitcoin (71%) is the cryptocurrency of choice, followed by Dogecoin (42%) and Ethereum (18%). 

Women Making Waves in Cryptosphere

Not only are women investing in crypto—they’re also promoting ways to widen the crypto space for other women. Let’s take a look at some of the top influencers in this field:

1. Tavonia Evans (@cryptodeeva)

Evans is the creator of the Guapcoin cryptocurrency, which was released in 2017. Initially conceived to amplify the Black community’s economic voice, the crypto now aims to “close the huge diversity gap” by including the Latinx people among the “underserved groups” that it hopes to reach. She’s also the co-founder of Block4Hire, a network that aims to connect new entrepreneurs and firms with blockchain experts. Moreover, the Atlanta-based Evans serves as the chief technology officer of crypto wallet Black Wall Street.

2. Meltem Demirors (@Melt_Dem)

Demirors was a strategy consultant in Deloitte’s Oil and Gas and the Digital Currency Group’s vice-president for development before becoming the chief strategy officer of CoinShares. The Jersey-headquartered firm was established in 2015 to provide advisory services, asset management, capital markets, and venture capital in the digital asset industry. She’s also the founder of her personal cryptofund, Athena Capital.

The MIT and Oxford educator hosts a weekly podcast, “What Grinds my Gears,” where discussions are a mixture of finance, technology, and history. Born in the Netherlands and currently based in New York, Demirors is also a founding member of the World Economic Forum’s Cryptocurrency Council. She also co-chairs the council with Visa’s head for crypto, Cuy Sheffield.

3. Maliha Abidi (@maliha_z_art)

The Pakistan-born Abidi is the woman’s rights activist behind the NFT collection “Women Rise.” Having migrated to the U.S. during her teens, the now U.K.-based portrait artist (who’s also completing her neuroscience degree) learned about NFTs through her accountant-husband. Proceeds from Women Rise go to a variety of pro-education and gender equality groups. One of the recipients is an online school that offers classes on how NFT artists can make a difference by bringing their work to Web3, the blockchain-based web that’s foreseen to be the next iteration of the Internet. Her short-term goal is for 100,000 girls to gain crypto, blockchain, and Web3 knowledge by the end of 2022.
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4. Cleve Mesidor (@cmesi, @cmesidor)

Mesidor leads the National Policy Network of Women of Color in Blockchain (where Evans is also a member), which partners with blockchain enterprises and the private sector to help female industry leaders build services and products in the crypto economy. She believes the future of crypto will be racially inclusive, with current trends pointing in that direction. According to Morning Consult, 35% of Black Americans and 37% of Hispanic Americans said they were keen on investing in cryptos compared to the 30% of white Americans who said the same.

Author of “The Clevolution: My Quest for Justice in Politics & Crypto,” Mesidor is also the executive director of the blockchain and cryptocurrency movement Blockchain Foundation. The former Obama appointee is also a public policy advisor to the Blockchain Association, which promotes industry-wide collaboration on all things crypto.

5. Elizabeth Stark (@starkness)

Stark is the co-founder and CEO of Lightning Labs, which began operating the beta version of the Lightning Network in 2018 to hasten Bitcoin transactions. The company recently successfully raised $70 million for the network to rival the likes of Visa, which could handle 65,000 electronic transactions per second. Over 300 firms are building on Lightning Lab’s technology.

She’s a fellow at the leading digital currency policy organization, the Coin Center, and has taught at Stanford and Yale Universities.

6. Lavinia Osbourne (@LaviniaOsbourne) 

Osbourne founded Crypto Kweens, an NFT marketplace that advocates the empowerment of female entrepreneurs, creators, and artists. It works with her educational and networking platform Women in Blockchain Talks (WiBT), whose campaign is to bring 50,000 women into the blockchain ecosystem by 2023. Her WiBT podcast aims to offer “jargon-free content” where women and men can share their knowledge and experience on crypto issues. The London-based woman also runs a financial well-being and business consultancy called Butterfly Wealth Creation. 

A sought-after international speaker, Osbourne won the 2022 CogX Gender Equality Leader Award and was a recipient of the TechWomen 100 Award in 2020 in the U.K.

7. Kinjal Shah (@_kinjalbshah) 

Shah co-founded the Komorebi Collective, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) that aims to raise money from the blockchain community to help more women and non-binary persons enter the crypto market. Members of the non-profit she256 and Women in Blockchain compose Komorebi’s core team.

The blockchain initiatives at Fidelity Investments, where Shah was a senior consulting analyst, sparked her interest in cryptocurrency. Shah—who’s barely 30—is also a partner at Blockchain Capital, a venture capital company investing in blockchain-enabled tech companies. She’s also part of the women-focused angel investment group Broadway Angels.

8. Caitlyn Long (@CaitlinLong_) 

Long is the founder of the Avanti Financial Group, which offers digital asset custody solutions and was recently renamed Custodia Bank. The Wall Street veteran of 22 years successfully pushed the lawmakers in her native Wyoming State to enact 20 blockchain-enabling laws. One of the laws granted bank charters to so-called special-purpose depository institutions (SPDIs), with Avanti being one of them. As a result, SPDIs could legally transact both dollars and digital currencies nationwide.

9. Preethi Kasireddy (@preethikasireddy, @iam_preethi)

Kasireddy is the founder of DappCamp, which promises to equip Web2 developers with skills that will make them ready for Web3 in three weeks. This particularly involves learning how to design, launch, and scale an app on Ethereum (Dapp), including smart contract development. 

The industrial and systems engineer was an investment banking analyst at Goldman Sachs before learning about blockchain while working at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). The venture capital firm invested in Coinbase, where she helped architect and rebuild its web technologies.

The San Francisco-based Kasireddy also established the TruStory, a tokenized digital debate platform that closed in 2020. She said that it had an “unsustainable” business model, although it was able to raise $3 million when it started in 2018.

10. Yi He (@heyibinance) 

Yi He is the co-founder and chief marketing officer of Binance, one of the world’s leading crypto exchanges where she says 35% of the managerial team features women. Binance now has more than 13 million active users and a daily trading volume of about $76 billion. It’s also the first official cryptocurrency exchange partner of the Grammy Awards after having signed a deal with Recording Academy.

Her foray into the cryptosphere began with OKCoin, where she was head of marketing and branding. The crypto exchange was set up in China but is now a globally licensed network. She also led the branding strategy of Yixia Technology, known as the makers of “China’s YouTube.” He was the brains behind one of its live-streaming platforms Yizhibo, which is now owned by Weibo.

11. Laura Shin (@laurashin)

Shin first became obsessed with digital currencies when she had to work on the Forbes fintech 50 list in 2015. A year later, the financial magazine’s former senior editor would launch her own “Unchained” podcast, where her broadcasts became a no-hype resource about crypto.

Her book “The Cryptopians,” which was launched in early 2022, talks about how “the first big cryptocurrency craze” came to be, starting with Vitalik Buterin’s creation of the Ethereum. The journalist was named the Most Insightful Journalist during the 2016 Blockchain Awards.

12. Natalie Brunell (@natbrunell, @nataliebrunell)

Natalie Brunell was an Emmy Award-winning TV reporter when she stumbled upon Bitcoin in 2017. After meeting people from Silicon Valley who invested in Bitcoin and worked at Coinbase, she produced a one-off story about a Bitcoin ATM for top-rated NBC station KCRA-TV in California that set her off to learn more about cryptocurrency. She refers to Bitcoin as the “best savings technology that’s ever been invented,” adding that it may be volatile in the short-term but has a “long-term store of value.”

In 2021, the Polish-American decided to do podcasting full-time, launching “Coin Stories,” where she interviews thought leaders in finance and Bitcoin. Brunell is also a video contributor to Bitcoin Magazine.

13. Layah Heilpern (@LayahHeilpern, @_layah_heilpern)  

Heilpern is a British broadcast journalist who published her book on cryptocurrency in 2021 titled “Undressing Bitcoin.”

She produced and anchored the world’s first crypto and blockchain news network, BlockLiveTV, which aired from Malta in 2018. She currently lives in Florida, where she’s producing “The Layah Heilpern Show,” a talk program that focuses on cryptocurrency, fintech, and entrepreneurship. It broadcasts on YouTube and various podcast hosting sites. She also offers consulting on crypto and social media marketing.

14. Rachel Siegel (@CryptoFinally)

Things turned around for Siegel, a former New York City substitute public school teacher, after learning about cryptocurrency through a friend who invited her to a crypto conference after-party in 2017. From investing around $25 or whatever is left from her paycheck weekly, she amassed profits in the lower seven-figure range.

Siegel then used her 12 years of experience in film, theater, commercial, and live events marketing and management to leave her teaching post and launch CryptoFinally, where she uses YouTube and other social media content to promote the digital currency. It has more than 85,000 followers worldwide.

15. Lea Thompson (@girlgone_crypto, @girl_gone_crypto)

Thompson first heard about cryptocurrencies from a computer geek friend who told her that he mined digital currency. Her first engagement with the digital currency came when she used Steemit to upload videos of her singing and playing the ukulele. The platform pays users with a cryptocurrency called Steem for posting content. She also had a side hustle writing blogs in which she got paid in cryptocurrency. 

After learning more about the digital currency and meeting others who work in the industry, Thompson started buying $500 to $1,000 worth of Bitcoin and Ethereum per month. She also began convincing others online to invest in crypto. 

In 2019, she launched Girl Gone Crypto, in which she creates edutainment videos to make cryptocurrency interesting and relevant to a broad audience. She has more than 34,600 TikTok followers and over 15,600 YouTube subscribers.

16. Randi Hipper (@missteencrypto) 

More popularly known by her alias “Miss Teen Crypto,” Hipper first heard about cryptocurrency from her father in 2016. Being 16 back then, she used her pocket money to start investing in Bitcoin. She later made digital artwork, which she sold online as NFTs. Since then, she has become the voice of Gen Z on Twitter and Instagram about crypto issues.

The New Yorker, who also hosts a regular podcast, believes that others her age who are “digital natives” can make crypto go mainstream with enough education about blockchain. She has already been interviewed by various print and broadcast media such as Fox Business, New York Times, and USA Today. Other fellow crypto enthusiasts like Layah Heilpern have also invited her to their social media shows.

17. Aleksandra Huk (@HukAleksandra, @aleksandrahuk)

Huk runs the CASHFLOW Stake Pool, which you can take part in as another way of making passive income from cryptocurrencies. Staking is setting aside a certain number of tokens toward the development of a blockchain, which employs what’s called a “proof-of-stake” (POS) consensus mechanism to verify the network’s transaction data. Examples of these blockchains are Cardano (Huk’s CASHFLOW operates here), Ethereum 2.0, Tezos, and Cosmos. The more you stake, the greater your chances are of qualifying as a transaction validator on the blockchain. In a staking pool, stakeholders bring together their resources so they can validate new blocks and earn block rewards.

Huk also actively tweets on cryptocurrency and finance decentralization issues. She’s in Crowdsense’s top 50 crypto influencers on Twitter.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is crypto mining?

A blockchain is actually a chain of virtual records or ledgers that document crypto transactions. Some cryptocurrencies reward people for validating data blocks and adding them to the blockchain, a process referred to as mining. Using powerful computers, miners get new coins or rewards for solving very complex mathematical calculations to complete the verification. Some people form so-called mining pools, with members working together and sharing the rewards. As the blockchain has grown, specialized companies or people form such pools as mining crypto requires high-capacity hardware operating in a cool environment.

Mining is similar to staking, but the latter is only available on POS-run blockchains, unlike mining that happens on proof of work models.

How much should you start spending for crypto if you’re just starting?

Most crypto exchanges have a minimum trade of $5 to $10. Those with trading apps may have a lower minimum.

Meanwhile, financial analysts say that crypto investments should be no more than 2% of your liquid portfolio or no more than 5% if you have little to no debt and are willing to take risks as crypto is a speculative asset. 

What cryptocurrencies are best for beginners?

Some of the cryptocurrencies that newbies can invest in are Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), XRP (by Ripple), Binance Coin (BNB), Cardano (ADA), and Solana (SOL).

How can I start buying or investing in cryptocurrency?

• First, do your research.

Learn as much as you can about the crypto industry. You can check out the explainers of the influencers we listed above. Doing so will allow you to get a feel of the industry, find a community of crypto enthusiasts, and even get tips on watching the volatility of an asset so you can time your purchase well.

• Consider your reasons for investing.

Exploring the crypto space can help you make more sense of your planned investment. Try to find out all you can about the digital currency you’d like to invest in. Each of them has a white paper that’s accessible for public viewing.

• Choose a broker or crypto exchange. 

The popular exchanges include Coinbase, Gemini, BlockFi, Binance.US, and eToro. Meanwhile, Robinhood and SoFi are among the more well-known crypto brokers. Study how your chosen exchange operates and secures assets.

• Create your account and deposit money to invest.

The crypto exchange may ask you to send a copy of your passport or driver’s license and to upload a selfie for verification.

You might have to link your bank account to the platform to make a deposit to the crypto exchange. 

• Safely store your cryptocurrency in your e-wallet.

When you open your account with an exchange, you’ll get a virtual wallet (also called a hot wallet) that will hold the codes for all your cryptocurrency. You can also opt for a cold wallet or physical storage device, like a USB drive, to keep your crypto keys offline.

• Manage your risk.

Don’t invest more than you can afford to lose. If you can’t afford to lose all the cryptos you bought, then you’re not in a position to put your funds in this asset. If you’re a long-term investor, you may choose to never sell, regardless of the price.