The female-friendly collective for the crypto curious
Crypto Besties was founded in opposition to finance’s bro culture.
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Honestly, you should be impressed we made it this far without talking about crypto. —Kate
This might go without saying, since I wrote on Tuesday about Instagram Stories being too much for me, but I know next to nothing about the world of cryptocurrency. Everything about it feels indistinguishable from the bro-y startup founders who are the loudest ones talking about it, which is why Crypto Besties caught my eye.
With a goal of being “the first makeup collective in the metaverse,” Crypto Besties is a collective for women and other underrepresented groups looking for a judgment-free place to take their crypto curiosity.
Rima Patel and Jaiya Gill, two of the women behind the collective, were inspired to start Crytpo Besties in an effort to change the space’s boy’s club reputation.
“A lot of the crypto knowledge and a lot of the jargon around it is not very friendly towards people that are non-crypto native,” Patel says over Zoom. “Having been in this space and explored it, we're like, what are some easy ways that we can allow an entry point into crypto?”
One pillar of this mission involves providing members with the knowledge they need to start exploring, which they disseminate in their Discord, as well as at virtual events, like Twitter Spaces, aimed at answering introductory questions about crypto.
“There's a lot of education out there, but there's not really anything that aligns the education,” Patel says. “Like, ‘why should I care about this?’ If someone doesn't care about something, no matter how much you educate them, it's not really going to accomplish something.”
With that in mind, Crypto Besties heavily emphasizes community, not just across their various socials, but by allowing members to purchase NFTs that give them a stake in the future of the collective, including voting rights and participation in the creation of the makeup line.
Ahead, in this interview for paid subscribers, Patel and Gill break down the challenges of bringing crypto to the mainstream, why women and underrepresented groups have been left out of the conversation, and what a makeup collective in the metaverse could look like.