What Do Women Want? More Educational Materials Before Investing in Bitcoin

There would be more women investing in bitcoin if they had more educational materials to help them, a new report found.

According to Grayscale, women and men are not so different when it comes to their interest in cryptocurrency. The issue is education. More female investors indicated they lack familiarity with bitcoin (76 percent female vs. 52 percent male investors) but 93 percent of the women surveyed said they’d be more open to investing if they had more educational resources available to them.

Of the 1,100 people polled, 51 percent were women. The people were surveyed between March 28 and April 3, 2019. All respondents were between the ages of 25 and 64 and were involved with some form of personal investing, with at least $10,000 in household investable assets (excluding workplace retirement plans or real estate), and at least $50,000 in household income. 

The survey found women were just as likely as men to see bitcoin’s high growth potential (56.2 percent of women, compared to 56.4 percent of men). They also understood bitcoin’s finite supply could drive future price increases (49.8 percent of women, 49.9 percent of men). 

But the women appeared to be more risk averse, with 60 percent prioritizing financial security over building wealth. Also, 67 percent of women felt their lack of familiarity with bitcoin stopped them from investing in it, compared to 48 percent of men. 

Women surveyed were also more cautious about the relative newness of the asset class. The absence of a track record was a concern noted by 65 percent of women compared to 56 percent of men. 

More women than men surveyed admitted to being less savvy on investing in bitcoin, too: 44 percent of women versus 22 percent of men.

The researchers concluded that greater education could go a long way to allaying investor fears and prompting more investing into crypto. A previous Grayscale report from July found 43 percent of investors interested in bitcoin were women. The recent study found 92 percent of female investors would consider investing if bitcoin had a longer track record. 

For now, crypto remains a male-dominated industry. Nearly 10 percent of bitcoin community engagement came from women in the past week, according to Coin.Dance. Quartz found nearly 85 percent of blockchain companies between 2012 and 2018 were founded by men, and a 2019 study found female developers accounted for fewer than 5 percent of the GitHub commits to the top 100 cryptocurrency projects.

Still, there is an opportunity for more women to invest in bitcoin if they had more information.  According to Grayscale, 47 percent of female investors feel a stronger sense of urgency about bitcoin than men and believe now is the time to invest before prices rise; by contrast, 39 percent of men think the same way. 

As one female respondent told Grayscale: “I feel like [bitcoin] has a good chance of being a once-in-a-lifetime investment opportunity that could pay off big.”

Edit (10:47 UTC, Dec. 18, 2019): We updated this article to include data on the male:female ratio of the survey respondents that was provided to CoinDesk after publication.