*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).
