Does cryptocurrency have a misogyny problem? #Rumors about sushi, models, and Copper Technologies
Imagine a dimly lit, red-lacquered room in a luxury hotel. Groups of men in hoodies, men in business suits and men in sunglasses stand ominously around a table holding energy drinks or laptops, while women serve as plates for sushi.
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Each week, crypto.news brings you #hashtag Gossip, a gossip column comprised of scoops and stories shaping the cryptocurrency world. If you have any tips, please email Dorian Batycka. (email protected)
No, this is not a casting call from the Weinstein era of 1990s Hollywood, but just another episode of #hearsay, a weekly gossip column that examines the salacious underbelly of cryptocurrency.
This week’s episode takes us behind the scenes of Copper’s sushi model uproar after its digital asset manager was arrested. Financial Times At the company’s Digital Asset Summit afterparty, scantily clad models used sushi plates.
The back story? Of course, it happened at the Mandrake Hotel, one of the shabbiest hotels in London. The hotel is owned by Rami Fustok, a Lebanese party boy turned hotel entrepreneur. Welcome to the world of underground cryptocurrency ‘bro’ culture, where seedy hotels are the backdrop for degeneration and misogyny.
Copper Technologies, the digital asset company hosting the party, is also not an activist social justice company. The company is said to have links to Russian arms dealers and approved bankers. In 2023 and 2024, Jonatan Zimenkov and Mikhail Klyukin were found to have transacted with the company in excess of $4.8 million and £15 million (about $18.9 million) respectively, and both were sanctioned by UK and US authorities. .
But let’s be honest: crypto is a total sausage fest, a testosterone-fueled echo chamber, and in a bear market women are as rare as Bitcoin. Worse, they are often targets of outright abuse.
In 2018, Laura Shin, a well-known cryptocurrency journalist and host of the “Unchained” podcast, wrote about her experiences with online harassment and threats from individuals within the cryptocurrency community. Over the years, she has documented specific instances of misogynistic comments and derogatory messages directed at her on social media platforms such as X and Reddit. On March 24, cryptocurrency influencer Jeremy Cahen (Pauly0x) called Shin a “whore” in the X space after canceling (and later postponing) an interview with the Porkcoin brothers. Cahen himself is no stranger to controversy, having been convicted, along with Ryder Ripps, of fraudulently profiting from and defaming Yuga Labs, known as one of the richest cryptocurrency bros in the game.
Tron (TRX), a token launched in 2018 that featured a prominent partnership with a blockchain-based porn platform, faced a wave of criticism after its launch. Since the inception of cryptocurrencies, women seem to have been viewed as mere secondary roles, cloaks to be objectified rather than listened to.
Explore conferences from Singapore to Miami. It’s no surprise that most of them are men. Companies within the industry must do more or face criticism for the lack of gender diversity in their executives and boards to ensure names and statistics are easily identifiable in public reports. Everything is public. This is what decentralized governance can and should be. Greater equality and more balance among markets and participants.
This is not to say that women are completely excluded from cryptocurrency. In fact, last weekend I attended DeSci in London, which featured an all-female panel that included representatives from AthenaDAO, AsteriskDAO, and HairDAO. In London, there are women at web3-focused events. Maybe it’s because men in London just want to eat sushi made by women at the Mandrake Hotel. One of my best friends in the industry, Aleksandra Artamonovskaja, studied at Sotheby’s Institute of Art and she is a cryptocurrency industry veteran who loves digital art.
My boss at Crypto.news, Catherine Mychka, reminds me at least once a week that my EU job is dominated by male writers. The proof is right in our faces. Although there are women in the industry, they remain a minority. They remain in the minority thanks to the toxic male culture that permeates our industry like a smelly fart.
Moreover, it is difficult to create a cryptocurrency if you have many structural conditions such as regular internet access from birth, food and shelter, math and coding schools, etc. But if your keynote engagements at major industry events feel dominated by self-appointed industry evangelists full of Christ-like white boys, the problem is that pro-Ramo industry figures permeate the industry like a foul odor. All right. You might want to make a splash, but calm down, crypto brothers!
When I first got into cryptocurrency, it felt like I was participating in a new utopian vision and holding out hope for a world powered by decentralization. Instead, that promise appears to have disappeared, replaced by a Kafkaesque caricature of an industry cannibalizing itself through greed and toxicity. Effective altruists who only pursue the twisted Silicon Valley 2.0 logic personified by white men strike me as a bit boring. The beauty of diversity is that it breeds innovation. With more voices, more perspectives, and more ideas, these forms grow exponentially.
There is a word of caution as I finish my regular plate of sushi. Anyone who criticizes the cryptocurrency ‘bro’ culture for which I am ashamed and out of touch is mistaking the fact that I myself am male and white. As I dipped my sushi rolls into a bath of soy sauce and wasabi, I wondered: Is there something wrong with me too? Or could we replace the future of cryptocurrency, where greed and misogyny seem to co-exist, with a world where we talk about SushiSwaps instead of sushi rolls?