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posted by janrinok on Thursday January 04 2018, @12:36PM   Printer-friendly
from the innovators-or-gamblers dept.

The CBC reports, http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/bitcoin-s-gender-divide-could-be-a-bad-sign-experts-say

Bitcoin, and the world of cryptocurrency, is a boys' club, say some experts, and that should be cause for concern.

Google Analytics results put the divide at 96.57 per cent men to 3.43 per cent women: https://coin.dance/stats/gender.

That's a huge red flag to Duncan Stewart, research director of Deloitte Canada's technology division. "It isn't merely that the value has risen as far and as fast as it has; it's the fact that it's 97 per cent men — that is, in and of itself, a potential danger sign," he says. "There are studies out there that suggest men are predisposed towards bubbles in a way that women are not."

Stewart made his case in a recent online post about the subject: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/bitcoin-bubble-gender-split-says-probably-duncan-stewart/?trackingId=LlXWi2rCxUW0itfA92%2BhSQ%3D%3D

Stewart said he "cannot think of any security, currency or asset class in history that shows that extreme a gender divide and has been sustainable."

[...] Iliana Oris Valiente is a rarity in the cryptocurrency world. She has emerged as a female leader in this space and was recently chosen to lead consulting firm Accenture's global blockchain innovation division. Oris Valiente doesn't buy into the theory that an outsized amount of male interest in a particular asset in and of itself creates a bubble. "If we have primarily men involved in building the businesses and being the early-stage investors, they're likely to share the new tidbits and the new deals with their own established networks."

But without a major catalyst, she doesn't see the gender divide in this field narrowing anytime soon.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday January 04 2018, @04:39PM (16 children)

    by GreatAuntAnesthesia (3275) on Thursday January 04 2018, @04:39PM (#617770) Journal

    Why are all the right-wing snowflakes bleating "wah wah the feminists are out to get me" when all the article is doing is pointing out a historical correlation between gender-imbalanced participation trends and risky investments?
    TFA doesn't even use the word "feminism". Nobody is whining about feminism except you.

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  • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday January 04 2018, @05:25PM (4 children)

    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Thursday January 04 2018, @05:25PM (#617813) Homepage Journal

    I think you need to clue yourself in on the meaning of the term "snowflake". It does mean "someone who cannot bear the thought of ever being disagreed with". It does not mean "someone who got pissed off about something".

    --
    My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 04 2018, @06:34PM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 04 2018, @06:34PM (#617862)

      Looks like this snowflake can't handle reality and must quibble over nuanced semantics so he doesn't have to realize he IS what he hates.

      • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday January 04 2018, @08:31PM (2 children)

        by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Thursday January 04 2018, @08:31PM (#617930) Homepage Journal

        Look who you're talking to... Quibbling over semantics is almost as fun to me sending a regressive leftist into a frothing rage with unarguable facts.

        --
        My rights don't end where your fear begins.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 04 2018, @09:44PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 04 2018, @09:44PM (#617980)

          It is amusing how you always imagine yourself as the winner of arguments, generally you get facts pointed out to you and you devolve into cliches one-liners. Hell, right now you're denying what you just did! How your brain maintains the connection between both hemispheres is a mystery, a neuro-scientist could probably get a Nobel Prize for finding out. Even by your own definition you're one of the biggest snowflakes around here.

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 04 2018, @05:26PM (10 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 04 2018, @05:26PM (#617815)

    That is what always happens these days. Clinton, feminists, sjw, not-racism. The persecution complexes around here are pretty epic.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 04 2018, @05:49PM (9 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 04 2018, @05:49PM (#617831)
      Every time someone brings up sex inequality about ANYTHING, I like to kindly remind them about the inequalities in construction, garbage collection, teaching, serving in restaurants, flight attending, auto repair, and myriad other fields. Why do these terrible, terrible inequalities never get the attention they deserve, while some made-up "currency" gets outrageous articles like this?

      If I was a lesser person, I'd say it might have less to do with actually making things "equal" and more to do with niche groups of women banding together and finding others to blame about not having more money (but this can't be true, since we all know that men are the greedy ones, not women, or else why would there be so much inequality in the tech fields? [What about the fields listed above? (LA LA LA CAN'T HEAR YOU, MEN ARE EVIL!)]). But I'll leave the conclusion-drawing to someone more qualified with, say, a gender studies degree.

      We need more women in tech? We need more women in bitcoin? How about: we need more women in delivery truck driving!
      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 04 2018, @06:39PM (6 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 04 2018, @06:39PM (#617867)

        How about you get a clue?? The article is about pointing out a massive bias in who supports bitcoin, there is no feminist agenda going on here. If it said all women were supporting bitcoin the same point applies. Any market with a VERY odd distribution should cause concern. Not to say bitcoin won't be successful, but even a slightly cautious investor would want to know such a detail.

        How about every time an article mentions gender you little boys come bleating out about male persecution and the push for equality. You are all little boys crying wolf, and it gets more tiresome than the feminist screeds. At least they have some valid persecution backing their complaints, all you've got is complaints ABOUT complaints.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 04 2018, @07:08PM (2 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 04 2018, @07:08PM (#617883)

          Maybe. Either way, let me toss the implicit assumptions on their head.

          Why is there no feminist agenda to get women interested in crypto currencies in favor of fiat money controlled by the kyriarchy? Where is the feminist agenda to empower women to have a Computer of One's Own?

          I'm... not just asking rhetorically... not entirely anyway....

          Is this going on behind closed doors? Would we be able to get occasional progress reports? Some of us are interested in women being empowered and liberated, but the caveat is that if a woman does not want digital liberties and a Computer of One's Own, then who am I to tell her that she should question her husband and all other systems of power? If I do that, I'm just another man telling a woman what to do and expecting her to just do what I tell her to unquestioningly.

          Something else about liberty and security. Men cannot liberate women. Women must liberate themselves. Liberation is earned, not given. Something given has no basis in value.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 04 2018, @07:56PM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 04 2018, @07:56PM (#617905)

            Right, cause you personally died in the Revolution and the Civil War. No wonder the black community has problems, THEY DIDN'T ALL FIGHT FOR THEIR OWN FREEDOM! Psssh, what lazy fuckers amirite?

            /sarc just in case

            I honestly don't know what the point of your comment is beyond that lame libertarian trope of "earned not given". It is funny, not being obsessed with "the feminist agenda" it really has zero bearing upon me as a white male techie. I regularly see the misogynerds doing their thing though, namely being immature twats.

            The only answer I can figure is that the looney feminists / SJWs are just that, a bit nuts with a total lack of perspective so they hurt their own goals. Ditto for people like you, just a poor little triggered sucker who wants to blame their own problems on "them". Try focusing your energy on more productive things like yoga and meditation to clear up your physical and mental issues. Or anything else that stops you rhetorically shit posting.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 04 2018, @08:47PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 04 2018, @08:47PM (#617941)

              That is definitely something I can do.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 04 2018, @09:19PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 04 2018, @09:19PM (#617964)

          Okay, so where are the articles pointing out the massive bias in:

          - who supports having giant diamond wedding rings?
          - who supports driving giant pickup trucks?
          - who supports buying household decor?
          - who supports buying hunting and fishing gear?

          As you said, "any market with a very odd distribution should cause concern." So where's the concern?

          Perhaps I'm wrong, but it seems like that's the very definition of what a market is in the first place. Should it be concerning that young people generally don't buy adult diapers? That old people generally don't buy video games? That men generally don't buy women's underwear and vice versa?

          So here we have a crappy article saying that it's somehow problematic that women don't have bitcoin in equal share to men (or "there's a wide gender divide." Whatever). You don't think there's a feminist drive behind such a publication, but let's break it down and examine it semi-critically.

          The summary itself talks first about a bubble (and looking at BTC prices lately, it's a legitimate threat that should be obvious to just about anyone), but at the end it talks about "narrowing the gender divide." Implied throughout is that male-dominated industries are bubbles, but causality is not established: do men invest in markets that happen to be bubbles, or do bubble markets happen to attract men to invest in them? Ah, forget it, let's talk about a female consultant and then close with something-something gender divide.

          Why mention anything at all about narrowing a gender divide? THAT is the line which reveals the true intent of the article. It's feminist fluff. The test is to take it to its logical conclusion: what would happen if the gender divide were narrowed? Would the market stabilize? Would it still be prone to bubbles like the one it's probably in now? Would anything be different at all? If so, prove it. If not, why mention the gender divide at all? What, if not a feminist jab at those evil men hoarding the virtual money, are they trying to get at?

          • (Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday January 05 2018, @10:37AM

            by GreatAuntAnesthesia (3275) on Friday January 05 2018, @10:37AM (#618283) Journal

            > The test is to take it to its logical conclusion: what would happen if the gender divide were narrowed? Would the market stabilize?

            "The birds are migrating early this winter, therefore we can expect unusual weather."
            Let's take that to its logical conclusion: What would happen if the birds flew south later? Would the weather be changed?

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05 2018, @10:16AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05 2018, @10:16AM (#618276)

          He still has a point, though.

          The article argues that anything with close to 100% men is likely to be a bubble, thus Bitcoin is likely a bubble. While I don't disagree with Bitcoin being a bubble, the argument itself fails to explain how this applies to e.g. the "garbage collection bubble"...

      • (Score: 3, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday January 04 2018, @08:36PM (1 child)

        by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Thursday January 04 2018, @08:36PM (#617934) Homepage Journal

        The FedEx delivery guy who delivered the heaviest package I got last year was a FedEx delivery chick. She almost fell over trying to carry it to the porch. I'm all about me some equality though, so I didn't offer to help.

        --
        My rights don't end where your fear begins.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 04 2018, @09:25PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 04 2018, @09:25PM (#617971)

          You promoted equality AND avoided a sexual harassment accusation!