DCGirl on Marketing Crypto to Women

  As the lone woman on a cryptocurrency team, I’m often asked my opinion about what women like. Recently I joined my team on Skype and a discussion was already underway. Like most altcoins, we’re working to increase the exposure of UltraCoin, so the team was talking about how UltraCoin can appeal to women. Worthy subject, right? The discussion went like this:

Head of Operations: we need to attract women

Marketing head: we could get a mascot, like Dogecoin has. Girls lovvvve animals.

Me: oh boy, here we go

Video producer: I could make a video of girls shopping and using UTC.

Me: well, that’s a thought. Or maybe we could show a mom sending UTC in the middle of the

night so her son can pay a tow truck driver when his car breaks down.

Head of Operations: how about if we get a woman celebrity to tweet about us?

Marketing head: or we could sponsor a makeup company?

Me: lol, guys

 My takeaway from this conversation? We in crypto have a lot of work to do to sell the idea of cryptocurrency, especially to women. Every cryptocurrency has one ultimate goal – adoption. Adoption means the general public uses the coin. That’s it. It’s just another method of payment, like a credit card; or an investment, like a stock; or a way to transmit value, like a moneygram. On that day, the grand crypto experiment is over and can be called a success.

 We are far away from adoption today. Many people don’t understand what cryptocurrency is (if they’ve even heard of it) and certainly don’t understand what it could mean to them.

 That’s what I try to add to these conversations. As a woman, what makes me want to support crypto? What does it mean to me? How could it make my life better? When I think about my financial life, I want several things. I want my money to be safe. I want my identity to be secure. I want my savings and my investments to grow. And I want to be able to access and use my money immediately, without barriers.

 Bitcoin and all of the newer cryptocurrencies, have a brilliant design. The network is a chain (the “blockchain”) spanning the globe. Every point on this chain works together to ensure the network is secure and each coin is safe. A wallet stores your coins –and you own this wallet, you control it and you secure it. A properly secured wallet is inpenetrable. Your coins are secure - when you hold them, when you send them to someone, when you spend them and when you buy them.

 Best of all, the blockchain and your wallet store information about transactions, but do not store or transmit any information about you. Your identity is entirely unknown to the cryptocurrency ecosystem (and before you ask, governments have proven to be quite effective at tracking criminal activity associated with crypto, so no, this anonymous identity feature does not lead to criminal activity. I could write a whole article about that).

 In what other ways does crypto solve my financial concerns? The list of its potential uses and applications is growing rapidly. One of the features of Ultracoin, the coin my team is responsible for, is called “Proof of Stake”. Proof of stake is a concept that encourages owners to hold their coins for an extended period of time – like a savings account in a bank. By holding your coins, you continue to serve as a part of the blockchain, securing the network for everyone. And proof of stake coins pay interest. As of this writing, Ultracoin pays its coin holders up to 20% per year. So if I hold 100 coins for one year, at the end of the year I have 120 coins. Try to find a bank that does that.

 And what about using all of those coins? Today, sending a money transfer internationally can take days. Just transferring money between banks takes hours. Our team tested sending Ultracoin to four different countries, one after the other. The entire four-legged journey took just 2 minutes and 31 seconds. One transaction takes less than 30 seconds. I could pay a cashier as fast as if I had used a credit card (and no one would have been able to steal my account information either). You could send Ultracoin to a relative in another country in an emergency and they would receive it almost immediately.

 Every single one of my financial concerns is addressed with cryptocurrency. If I were charged with attracting women to crypto, THIS is what I would tell them. I would tell them that their money is now safe. Their identity is secure. Their investments actually make them money. And they can use their money quickly and easily.

 I’m going to show them our tow truck video. I’m going to have a video that shows me with my secure wallet, while a TV set plays in the background with news about the latest credit card breach. I’m going to create a video that follows my coins as they fly around the world. I’m not going to put butterflies and puppies on a video to talk to women about crypto. I don’t need to.

 Kudos to jakoblight, our awesomely talented video producer for the video accompanying this article. And apologies to my team for sharing ourconversation. They are a fantastic group and I am so lucky to be a part of it.

DCGirl for BITCOINWOMANmag

*Disclaimer: what I’ve written is accurate, but not all of these features are in place yet. We are working very hard to help merchants worldwide accept cryptocurrency as a payment method and to allow coin owners to easily exchange those coins into native currency