It's quite likely that almost no women lost any Bitcoins in the great Mt. Gox meltdown of 2014.
That's because almost no women own Bitcoins at all, according to a new online survey of Bitcoin users by Simulacrum, the blog of Lui Smyth, a researcher at University College London. About 93 percent of the crypto-currency's users are male, according to Smyth's latest survey, which is still ongoing. This survey hasn't yet hit a representative sample, but last year's survey of 1,000 users came up with a 95-percent male demographic.
The results suggest that Bitcoin has alienated women just as much as the two worlds it inhabits, finance and technology. This is good news for women, who have avoided a string of Bitcoin debacles, including the collapse of Mt. Gox, once the world's biggest Bitcoin exchange, which recently admitted it had lost more than $400 million worth of Bitcoins, maybe forever, to theft. But it is probably not healthy for Bitcoin.
The average Bitcoin user is "a 32.1 year old libertarian male," according to the 2013 survey, with 44 percent of users describing themselves as "libertarian/anarcho-capitalist." And libertarian/anarcho-capitalists tend to be white men, other studies have shown[...]The evidence also suggests these users are not only men, but also mostly white and wealthy, TP's Annie-Rose Strasser wrote.
"In order to buy the sometimes wildly expensive currency, Bitcoin users need to be wealthy. And they can afford to put their wealth into a currency that isn’t widely accepted or even recognized," wrote Strasser. "Plus, they move easily through the financial and digital space — the process of 'mining' bitcoins demands it.... The sum total of these things — advanced knowledge of computer science, wealth — are also markings of the young, white male."
Saturday, March 1, 2014
HuffPo:Bitcoin Is Apparently A Rich, White, Male Disaster
Mark Gongloff at Huffigton Post writes:
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"This is good news for women..." What? Perhaps the Marxist twits of the world should encourage women to go into the financial and digital space fields like they encourage women into science, math, and to compete as grand chess champions. They too can take a risk and become wealthy like those pesky white males. We can first start with my wife who has no interest in learning how to use the remote control for our smart T.V.....stop telling me the remote does not work, women! Learn it or it is off to the gulag....
ReplyDeleteAlways interesting to get opinions from people who are not involved in bitcoin. Usually, they don't have a clue. This article is a fine example. Sure, there aren't many women in bitcoin at the moment (although my wife loves it) but geeky technology is just not something many women are interested in. Just like the advent of the internet and email, it was only the computer geeks that took an interest in the beginning.
ReplyDeleteWhen Bitcoin is polished to the point that women, the "average Joe" or "grandma" can use it then the masses will flow in. Therein lies the opportunity. The new, super-wealthy will be the geeks or, as I like to say, "the geeks shall inherit the earth". :)
EDIT FOR CLARIFICATION: When Bitcoin is polished to the point that the average person (including non-techie women, and "grandmas") chooses to use it then the masses will flow in. Many women, at this point of the game, don't really have an interest in Bitcoin. Nothing wrong with that.
DeleteIf you are involved in Bitcoin, you do not have a clue.
DeleteThe masses are never going to flow in.
It was not just "computer geeks" who were interested in the internet and email 25 years ago.
44 percent of users describing themselves as "libertarian/anarcho-capitalist."
ReplyDeletetranslation: 44 percent of users describing themselves as naive children.
Anyone converting dollars to bitcoin for ideological reasons is simply a fool. People who held Bitcoins pitched it to that crowd, basically pulled their chain. "Hey do you really support Ron Paul? Why don't you prove it and buy some Bitcoin?!"
Hey Wolfboy Hack. Ron Paul does not understand Bit Coin or other kind of virtual currency. He understands the non-partisan commodity money of Gold and Silver (or whatever the market will bear). You and your ilk believe money should be the figment of a bureaucrat's imagination, and thus be created for ideological reasons. So that makes you a fool for not converting your dollars into gold.
Delete"Young, male and [with disposable income] (which apparently passes for wealth today)" has characterized the pioneers of almost every significant human advancement in the past few centuries, from the Age of Exploration to the Industrial Revolution to the Wild West to the oil, gas, and mining booms all over the world.
ReplyDeleteThat worldwide bitcoin users are mostly white is not proven in any of the sources of this article, only implied based on an unrelated survey of U.S. residents self-identifying as libertarians. In any event, this is unsurprising, and it really holds no predictive power on the probability of bitcoin's demise- it merely adds to the mountain of evidence on what kind of people partake in high-risk, high-reward enterprises.
Bitcoin is just more rich, white, male privilege keeping the females and minorities down.
ReplyDeleteStealing bitcoins isnt just a crime...it's a hate crime.
And owning bitcoins is obvious sexism and racism
There's truth in this, but it tends in the opposite direction from HuffPo's point....naturally.
ReplyDeleteIt's not that BTC is privileged, because young, upmarket white males go there; it's that BTC was created to TARGET and FLEECE affluent non-elite white males, because they are a POTENT source of resistance to the financial elites of the New World Order.
BTC was intended to impoverish just that class, because they constitute a threat.
When a known disinfo outlet point one way, emphatically, turn your head and look in the opposite direction.
Want to defeat the NWO? Stay away from everything trumpeted in the MSM, reflexively. Cultivate your own "edge" no one knows about.
Stay rich. You need all your wits and wallet to survive.
Huffpo is a socialist movement. I've said that for past 3-4years. I been banned(my screen name) from there about 2years ago. I'm telling you's they are a socialist movement
ReplyDeleteAnd, how do we know anyway that these were affluent WHITE males? More disinfo? Plenty of Indians lost money. Maybe this was financial war as part of state policy, which is why power-elite fixer, Bharara is being trotted out to "investigate? Maybe he can find some gopher Indian somewhere to throw in jail so that the chosen ones of Wall Street can continue fleecing the non-chosen.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.financialexpress.com/news/indians-lose-crores-in-bitcoins-as-japan-exchange-goes-kaput/1230529/2
FACT: Most bitcoin users are chinese, naturally. Do they realize bitcoin's are a global phenomenon?
ReplyDelete