Cases of harassment surfaced at Miami Bitcoin in 2022

Cryptospace remains unsafe as we see harassment cases emerge at The Bitcoin 2022 conference.

Trigger Warning: Mentions of sexual harassment, cyber-harassment, sexual assault and possible stalking

The Bitcoin 2022 conference, hosted by Bitcoin Inc. at the Miami Beach Convention Center in Florida in the US in April, became embroiled in controversy as various cases of harassment emerged from the three-day cryptocurrency event. Several women have come forward with allegations of sexual harassment and online harassment following the conference.

On April 9, the last day of the conference, a woman attending the conference found her Twitter mentions flooded after someone from the conference posted an unflattering photo of her behind. She makes a living from yield farming and trading cryptocurrencies and has a modest online following. The picture was taken and published without her knowledge or consent. The responses included disparaging remarks about her body and appearance, as well as crude suggestions of a sexual nature. The woman traced the origin of the malicious tweet back to a user called @bitcoin_fuckboi, whom she identified as someone she had met and spoken to during the conference. At the time of writing, the offending tweet, among other provocative content surrounding the event, is still publicly visible on the user’s profile.

Rightfully disturbed, she attempted to seek help from the event’s harassment policy only to receive lukewarm, non-committal responses from the organizers. After direct messaging the conference’s official Twitter account, she was put in touch with a spokesperson who identified herself as Twitter user @Chairforce. The person redirected her to the contact form on the event’s official website. She found that the user had also liked several of the tweets she had labeled as harassment.

On April 10, the head of events for BTC Inc, Justin Doochin, responded to the victim’s email regarding the incident. Although he apologized to her for what she had to face, he did not suggest any follow-up action. According to the Wired article, he claimed that “without this person’s name or email, we have no way to identify them and prevent them from attending future events.” However, the victim pointed out that @bitcoin_fuckboi had posted a number of selfies on his account with prominent Bitcoin personalities during the event, which could indicate who harassed her. No further action was taken to remedy the situation.

Bitcoin Inc CEO David Bailey wrote on Twitter that @Chairforce had been “seriously reprimanded but everyone makes mistakes and I’m not firing them for it.” Of the conference itself, he wrote, “26,000 people attended, don’t let a few bad apples color the community.” When asked how the organization handles violations of its harassment policy, Bailey declined to answer.

Unfortunately, this was not the only case of harassment to come out of the Miami conference.

A woman claims a man groped her breasts at a private party while she was attending the conference. Another woman, leaving an after-party at the home of a prominent crypto investor, found that someone had slipped an AirTag (a small tracking device) into her purse. She has since left a job in the industry because of the toxicity in society. Both women were disturbed by the events, but chose not to report to law enforcement for fear of a backlash in the crypto community or retaliation from their harassers. They have asked that their identities be withheld.

Two other women talked about not attending the conference after learning that Peter Todd, a former Bitcoin developer, would be speaking. Todd was accused of sexual assault in 2019, although he continues to deny any wrongdoing.

Harassment in the crypto community also extends to those who try to speak up against it. Bitcoin podcaster Tom Maxwell received an onslaught of derogatory remarks, hate comments and even death threats for his chirping about his blog post calling for an end to “rape glorification, misogyny and sexual harassment” in the Bitcoin community.

Similarly, European lawmakers have faced unprecedented levels of online harassment as EU institutions move to regulate the crypto industry. Members of the European Parliament, especially women, have been targeted by the predominantly male proponents of cryptocurrencies. Assita Kanko, co-mayor of the European Parliament, has received harassment including sexist, racist insults and threats of violence.

The tech space and, by extension, the crypto space has been rife with toxicity towards women in these male-dominated fields. These aren’t the first instances of harassment the crypto community has seen, and unfortunately, they wouldn’t be the last for a while. It is high time that accountability measures and protective failsafes for vulnerable members of society are put in place and enforced when necessary. We hope highlighting these events will encourage leaders and players in the crypto space to advocate and demand a safer environment for all participants, especially for women who are a minority in this space.

Disclaimer: This article is largely informed by a Wired article published back in May and the email thread our team was involved in with other media spokespersons regarding this matter. The parties to the email thread have attempted to reach out to the victims, but unfortunately were unable to speak with them for further updates.

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