BFFs Brit Morin and Jaime Schmidt

Over 59 million American adults use cryptocurrency by 2022. Yet women own half as much as men. As ownership is broken down by race and ethnicity, the ownership gap widens further, with 24% Latinx, 8% Black, and 6% Asian and other races/ethnicities. Brit Morin and Jaime Schmidt believe this is due to the lack of access and understanding around web3, which is why they founded BFF, an open access community that aims to help more women and non-binary people become educated, connected to and rewarded in crypto. and web3.

The company recently launched several new initiatives to continue its goal of expanding access to education, including a free newsletter written by journalist Caroline Fairchild and the Belonging and Mattering Council, a diverse group of individuals who will create programming and initiatives to support under-resourced communities, including professional development programs, partnerships with BIPOC organizations and more.

I spoke with Morin and Schmidt shortly after the launch of the Belonging and Mattering Council (BMC) last month.

Amy Shoenthal: Tell me about BFF and how the two of you came together to create this community.

Brit Morin: I have been in the crypto ecosystem for about a decade. I hosted a cryptocurrency summit in January 2018 through Brit + Co and over 20,000 women attended. That’s where we started learning about basics like Bitcoin and Ethereum and the blockchain.

It turns out that the number of women investing in crypto has decreased recently, from 15% to 9%. So I called Jamie, who I had only met once before, and said, “Want to help me build a truly inclusive community that gives women the information and education they need to access, and of course, the opportunity to invest if they want to. to?’ That’s how BFF was born.

Jaime Schmidt: I had set up Schmidt’s Naturals, the brand of personal care products that I scaled for acquisition by Unilever. So I wanted to help businesses that were also bootstrapping. I had been quite active at Clubhouse when people started talking more and more about web3, so my husband and I started our first project called CPG: Crypto Packaged Goods. We have a Genesis collection with around 300 members. That’s what caught Brit’s interest. When she called me up, I was excited to have a bigger impact on women in this room.

Shoenthal: Where does the name BFF come from?

Morin: We wanted to create a community of women and non-binary people who can come together to invest in financially risky industries. Women are actually more thoughtful investors than men. But their tolerance for risk tends to be much lower. We wanted to make this community feel like an easy place to go, where you’re not afraid to ask questions, like you’re talking to a friend. That’s where the name comes from.

Shoenthal: You just said that women’s tolerance for risk tends to be lower than men’s. Do you really believe that?

Schmidt: That’s what the data says, but I struggled with that statement because I think about my own story of jumping in as an entrepreneur with no experience and just going for it. It is perhaps less about risk aversion and more about wanting to be thoughtful and educated. That’s why we needed to create a space where women could feel welcome, but also get the education they wanted.

Shoenthal: What are some challenges you both faced as women in crypto?

Morin: The typical obstacle is that there are all these groups already formed, mostly with men who let each other in on new deals and opportunities. You knock on the door and ask to be part of that group, but you don’t look or sound like them.

We thought if the men weren’t going to let all the women into their groups, why don’t we make our own? How can we inform people about this new thing that is coming and not feel left out?

We don’t think about the limitations of being women in web3. We think about the opportunities that exist for us to build a wider network that allows others to join.

Schmidt: The challenges we face are typical of any start-up and not necessarily a gender problem. There are so many brands in the room. What can we do that is different? How do we stand out, how do we capture consumers’ attention and let people know we mean business?

Shoenthal: You just announced the Belonging and Mattering Council, which is another step in building what seems like equity and inclusion in web3. Can you tell me a little about it?

Schmidt: We wanted the council to be a group of people who had similar intentions to bring equity and diversity into the space. It’s a fairly new initiative and we’re excited about the potential.

Morin: I am very excited about the founding members of the council. We have everyone from actor, activist and entrepreneur Natasha Rothwell, to transgender executives, lawyers and everyone in between. We try to practice what we preach and make sure to have visibility in all kinds of underserved communities. We need to ensure that we don’t just pay lip service to this, but actually build actions around it.

We want to perform at large events, multicultural festivals and other places where we can create educational tracks for people who still think that web3 is not available. We also want to have some of the BFF community leaders, many of whom are venture capitalists or CEOs, to mentor and support people from these communities.

Shoenthal: It sounds like you’re really trying to make connections for people who don’t have that access yet, which speaks to all the possibilities that exist in web3. However, I also want to acknowledge the state of the market right now and what has happened over the past few months. Talk to me about the dip. What does it mean for people who are now more skeptical about investing?

Schmidt: It’s all fun and glory until the market crashes. It’s just part of the normal cycle. For our society to go through it together and understand that this is reality is very important.

Morin: Remember that we are so early. Only a single digit percentage of the world knows what crypto and web3 are. Once you get used to being an early adopter, you learn that things are ephemeral, which is really the nature of being an early adopter. Slowly, over time, more and more infrastructure will be built and regulation will be instilled. The latest estimate is that crypto will be a $10 trillion market by 2030. I would say that estimate is pretty accurate.

It’s going to take almost a decade for crypto and web3 to go mainstream. The key for brands right now is figuring out how to attach real utility to NFT projects. I just saw that Ticketmaster is now issuing tickets as NFTs. Pearson has created NFT textbooks for students, which makes sense when you consider how students resell their books. There is so much value in the technology itself and so many use cases that we have barely scratched the surface.

Many may look at the market and think, this was just a fad. The people who were only here for the fashions will disappear. There will be less competition. This is where real innovation is going to happen. I think 12 months from now we’re going to see some really radical ideas emerge from this bear market.

Shoenthal: What do you think the future of crypto and web3 looks like?

Schmidt: I think infrastructure will continue to be very important. Thinks about how consumers make purchases, share purchases and have wallet-to-wallet messaging. We are building the fundamentals of web3 like we built the internet in the 90s. When email was a new thing, people were like, heh, I could send you a message and you receive it immediately, and then you can send me one back? It’s insane.

People are just starting to think of NFTs as a real tool, not just a pretty piece of art or a brand. Now there are member communities, NFT reservations at restaurants and real social clubs.

Crypto and web3 can also be used to make things that are currently illiquid liquid. It is very difficult right now to buy and sell real estate or for the average person to invest in a business. You can’t just decide to sell your house one day with a one-click transaction. There is an opportunity to make these transactions much easier. Those building right now are going to have a front row seat to take advantage of all this white space as new innovations come out.

Morin: We’re so early, but it’s not a zero-sum game. I really want us to be able to shine the spotlight on each other and share the wealth. And frankly, we need everyone to play and win if we’re going to actually bring more people into the fold. Fortunately, there is room for everyone to play and win.