Now, even though there are a number of women-focused crypto spaces, Odeniran says women are still underrepresented. “I’ve been in spaces where I’m the only Black person, or the only woman, or the only Black woman,” she says. Odeniran says women need these spaces to get involved, but also for solidarity. Spaces where women are outnumbered can feel exclusive, or worse: unsafe.
After Siegel discovered that a conference organizer had engaged with the harassing tweets, she got a friend to raise the issue once again with an acquaintance who worked for the conference. This time, she got a response. “I apologize that this occurred at our event,” wrote Justin Doochin, the head of events for BTC Inc., “but without this person’s name or email, we have no way of identifying them and preventing them from attending future events.” Siegel wrote back to say that @bitcoin_fuckboi had posted a number of selfies to his account, including with prominent Bitcoin personalities, during the event. She also remembered he rode the mechanical bull at the conference, which would narrow it down to just a few dozen possible attendees.
Meanwhile, David Bailey—the CEO of Bitcoin Inc., the organization that runs the Bitcoin conference—responded to the incident on Twitter. @Chairforce, he wrote, had been “seriously reprimanded but everyone makes mistakes and I’m not firing them for it.” As for the conference itself, he wrote, “26,000 people attended, don’t let a few bad apples color the community.” One woman replied to suggest that women might feel more safe if they had clarity about the conference’s code of conduct. “We have that already,” Bailey responded. (Organizers of the Bitcoin conference declined to answer my questions about how it handles harassment or violations of its harassment policy.)
For Siegel, there’s no way to undo the damage of the harassment she experienced on Twitter. But she still wants the organizers to take accountability for what…
