Over 59 million U.S. adults use cryptocurrency as of 2022. Yet women own half as much as men. As ownership is broken down by race and ethnicity, that ownership gap widens even 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 get educated, connected and rewarded in crypto and Web3.
The company recently launched several new initiatives to continue their mission 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 to Morin and Schmidt just following the launch of the Belonging and Mattering Council (BMC) last month.
BFF's Brit Morin and Jaime Schmidt
Amy Shoenthal: Tell me about BFF and how you two teamed up to create this community.
Brit Morin: I’ve 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 basic things like bitcoin and Ethereum and the blockchain.
It turns out the number of women investing in crypto has gone down recently, from 15% to 9%. So I called up Jamie, who I'd only met one time before and said, ‘Want to help me build a really inclusive community that gives women information and education they need access to, and of course, the opportunity to invest if they want to?’ That's how BFF was born.
Jaime Schmidt: I had bootstrapped Schmidt’s Naturals, the brand of personal care products that I scaled to acquisition by Unilever. So I wanted to help companies who were also bootstrapping. I had been pretty active on Clubhouse when people started talking more and more about Web3, so my husband and I kicked off our first project called CPG: Crypto Packaged Goods. We have a Genesis collection with about 300 members. That's what caught Brit’s interest. When she called me up, I got excited about having a greater impact on women in this space.
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 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 a bootstrapped entrepreneur with no experience and just going for it. It might be 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 that education they were craving.
Shoenthal: What are some challenges that you both faced as women in crypto?
Morin: The typical obstacle is that there are all these groups already formed, mostly with men who are letting each other in on new deals and opportunities. You're kind of knocking at the door asking to be part of that group, but you don't look or sound like them.
We figured if the men weren’t going to let all the women into their groups, why don't we create our own? How can we inform people about this new thing that's coming down the pipeline and not feel like we are ostracized?
We don’t think about the limitations of being women in Web3. We think about the opportunities that exist for us to build a broader network that allows others to join in.
Schmidt: The challenges we face are typical of any startup and not necessarily a gender issue. There are so many brands in the space. What can we do that's different? How do we stand out, how do we catch consumers’ attention and let people know that we're serious?
Shoenthal: You just announced the Belonging and Mattering Council, which is another step in building what seems like equity and inclusivity in Web3. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
Schmidt: We wanted the council to be a group of people that had similar intentions on bringing equity and diversity into the space. It’s a fairly new initiative and we're excited about its potential.
Morin: I'm really excited about the founding members of the council. We’ve got everyone from actress, activist and entrepreneur Natasha Rothwell, to transgender leaders, lawyers and everyone in between. We're trying to practice what we preach and make sure to have visibility into all kinds of underserved communities. We have to ensure we're not just doing this as lip service, but actually building actions around it.
We want to show up at big events, multicultural festivals and other places where we can create educational tracks for people who still think Web3 isn’t accessible. We also want to have some of the BFF community leaders, many of whom are venture capitalists or CEOs, help mentor and support people from these communities.
Shoenthal: 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 status of the market right now and what's transpired over the past few months. Talk to me about the dip. What does that mean for people who are now more skeptical about investing?
Schmidt: It's all fun and roses until the market crashes. That’s just part of the normal cycle. For our community to go through that together and to understand that this is reality is really important.
Morin: Remember, 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 volatile, which is really the nature of being early. Slowly, over time, more and more infrastructures will be built and regulation will be instilled. The latest projection is that crypto will be a $10 trillion market by 2030. I would say that projection is fairly accurate.
It’s going to take almost a decade to get crypto and Web3 to be 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 college students, which makes sense when you think about how college students resell their books. There's so much value in the technology itself and so many use cases that we've barely scratched the surface.
A lot of people can look at the market and think, this was just a fad. The people that were just here for the fads will go away. There's going to be less competition. This is where true 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 really important. Thinking about how consumers make purchases, share purchases, and have wallet to wallet messaging. We are building the basics of Web3 like we built the internet back in the ‘90s. When email was a new thing, people were like, whoa, I could send you a message and you receive it instantly, and then you can send me one back? That's crazy.
People are just starting to think about NFTs as a real utility, not just a pretty piece of art or a brand. Now there are membership communities, NFT-only reservations at restaurants and real life social clubs.
Crypto and Web3 can also be used to make things that are currently illiquid liquid. It’s really hard 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’s an opportunity to make those transactions much more simple. The people who are 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 spotlight one another 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. Luckily, there's room for everyone to play and win.
The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
