*By Alisha Haridasani*
At the world’s first Bitcoin conference in 2011, Morgen Peck saw one woman among the 50 people at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City.
“And she identified herself as the wife of a miner,” said Peck, who has been covering cryptocurrency since [that first gathering](https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/networks/the-worlds-first-bitcoin-conference) of ambitious cyber-miners sought to unearth a fortune buried in computer code.
Since then, cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin have reached a wider public, but seemed to still be a boys club. In January, at the North American Bitcoin Conference, there were 84 men invited to speak, and only three women. A conference after-party was held at a strip club, according to a recent [New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/25/business/cryptocurrency-women-blockchain-bros.html) article.
It's impossible to know for sure how many women participate in cryptocurrency markets given the anonymous nature of blockchain technology, but [some statistics](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/03/is-it-bad-if-bitcoins-biggest-winners-or-losers-are-men/556190/) indicate that between 75 and 95 percent of transactions or engagements are made by men.
Still, Peck said that a few trailblazing women who cracked into crytpocurrency early are helping shift the balance, and women's contributions may surprise investors and crypto analysts.
“Not only are they CEOs of companies but they’re also putting, what many of them describe as, extra hours and almost a second job into trying to highlight the work of women and trying to make it easier for them to enter into the playing field,” said Peck in an interview Thursday with Cheddar.
Peck profiled [nine women](https://www.glamour.com/story/meet-the-women-of-cryptocurrency) deeply involved in cryptocurrencies for Glamour magazine's "Money Issue," out this month.
“I think we see very little of the women in this space," said Peck, and that further contributes to the image of a so-called bro culture in crypto.
The women she profiled are evangelizing to pull more women into cryptocurrency.
“After all, the end goal of most cryptocurrency enthusiasts is mass adoption, not just male adoption,” Peck said.
For full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/women-in-crypto-push-back-against-bro-culture).
Joe Cecela, Dream Exchange CEO, explains how they are aiming to form the first minority-controlled company to operate an exchange in U.S. history. Watch!
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
