The Girlboss is dead. Say Hello to the Queen of Cryptos

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Reese Witherspoon knows her audience. As Matt Damon grunted ‘fortune smiles on the brave’ in a hyper-masculine video for Crypto.com, Witherspoon, who has turned gold in book clubs and other female-centric media, addressed to Twitter with his own message: “Avatars, crypto wallets, digital assets will be the norm. Do you foresee this?”

She talks about cryptocurrency, or “Web3”: a broad view of the internet where individuals own goods and virtual goods, verified by power-hungry algorithms or by randomly selected individuals. The “girlboss” label for Witherspoon’s warning don’t stay behind the boys may have gone out of fashion, after leaders of empowerment-flavored startups like Wing and Away publicly crashed and burned. But the principles of uncritical ambition and representational feminism have found an enthusiastic host in the latest technocratic trend. Just as the Lean In culture distracts from deep-rooted power issues in corporate structures, the new Crypto Queen story is one of urgent individual enrichment rather than a systemic transformation of wealth structures.

As a woman who has worked in emerging technologies such as AI and virtual reality for the past decade, I’m not surprised. Inevitability and individualism have always been the broad overlap between the Venn diagrams of girlboss culture and warmongering techno-optimism. The future is already here, whether it’s stylish luggage, digital pieces or the office nook, and the only choice is buy or get out. But who will end up winning if “avatars, crypto wallets, digital assets” become the norm? And who can afford the risks necessary to gamble?

Because digital tokens have no inherent value and are not backed by any other asset, the hype is the product of crypto and those with the most to lose are in the worst position. As more and more individuals take risks in an unregulated space by buying and striking, the base widens and the players at the very top get richer – a cast that includes the usual suspects ( men) from VC like Andreessen Horowitz, Mark Cuban and Elon Musk. There is a name for a structure like this: a pyramid system. Crypto fraud cost $14 billion in 2021, a 500% increase from the previous year. The fledgling field is littered with scams like the Cryptoland Virtual Fyre Fest and NFTs of a woman’s actual farts in a jar. Owner of stolen Bored Apes NFT series lost over $1 million and a trader accidentally sold a $300,000 NFT for $3,000 after misplacing a decimal point.

Witherspoon isn’t the only one pushing crypto to women using the girlboss playbook. In December, Gwyneth Paltrow announced a partnership with Cash App on a Bitcoin holiday giveaway, with her own tweet trumpeting the cryptocurrency major’s efforts to “democratize” participation. Last January, Brit Morin, who made a name for herself with Brit + Co, a hot digital brand for the DIY millennial era, launched a clever new company called BFF. The company’s “founding BFFs” include Paltrow, as well as a wing co-founder and employee of crypto firm Coinbase, whose (male) CEO made headlines in 2020 for supporting that internal social justice efforts were distracting from the startup’s core mission.

People walk past a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT billboard in Times Square on January 25, 2022 in New York City. Noam Galai/Getty Images

Efforts like these and new funds dedicated to investing in women-founded crypto companies like Komorebi Collective are reconditioning the ground that if the industry seems more gender-diverse, it will be more equitable. They promise that the success of any woman equals the advancement of all underrepresented groups. But if the cultural downfall of the girlboss has taught us anything, it’s that this premise doesn’t hold true. Women can also be terrible bosses. They can run elaborate and expensive scams and, especially for people looking for the “community” that crypto enthusiasts call the industry, diversity does not guarantee belonging. In the era of “The Great Resignation”, we finally recognize that work is not family. A commerce-based community will never like you either.

If we remember the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s, “Web2” was also presented as a force for democratization. While complex technological gatekeepers were hallmarks of the early Web, user-generated content was Al Gore’s Internet innovation: platforms like Tumblr and Flickr with easy-to-use interfaces allowed anyone person with a computer to participate in the “Social Web”. But without meaningful regulation – and under the guise of naïve techno-optimism – platforms have morphed into (or been absorbed into) gigantic corporations, wresting control. What’s preventing Web3 from terminating the same way? The big guys are definitely not sitting this one. Square, Jack Dorsey’s fintech focus since leaving Twitter, recently changed its name to Block, signaling a new chapter. Last year, Amazon Web Services expanded its Amazon Managed Blockchain offering to support Ethereum.

Proponents of “Web3” argue that the technology is designed to limit power, enforce scarcity through the blockchain, and control the uncontrolled growth that now characterizes Web2. But we know all too well in our physical world how resource scarcity has led to deeper disenfranchisement. The housing market, plagued by corporate speculation, is crowding out the middle class. Even beyond economics, big business is contributing to climate change at a dizzying rate. Without strict regulation, the same hoarding will be rampant in a Web3 Internet. In fact, crypto is already a concerning climate threat: Bitcoin transactions last year wiped out all energy gains from electric cars.

Crypto Queen’s narrative may be compelling at a time when women-founded companies claimed just 2.3% of venture capital funding in 2020, and #MeToo stories continue to flow steadily. There’s no denying it: the world is neither fair nor equitable for women. While caregivers, and mothers in particular, have cried out for help from government and employers in this pandemic to no avail, new communities are a promising path to thriving. But a truly gendered and racially just future with opportunities for all, a future where collective action reshapes power structures and breaks generational patterns, cannot be built by the same cast of characters using the same tired script. Crypto is a familiar old wolf, and Crypto Queen feminism is her pair of upcycled sheepskin clogs. Buyer beware.

Rebecca Ackermann is a designer, writer and artist in San Francisco. She has worked in the tech industry on efforts such as AI for healthcare, financial literacy tools, and virtual reality for education. His writings have appeared in The New York Times, Gloria, and other publications.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.

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