Boy math: what it means

Have you heard of “girl math”? It’s a funny social media trend from the summer where women shared tortured arithmetic they might use to justify excessive spending. For instance, “If you return an item for $50 and then spend $100 on another item, it’s like only spending $50.”

Now comes “boy math.” The trend began last month, according to Know Your Meme, but took off in the last few days after women began sharing the example of men using boy math to exaggerate height by saying 5 feet 9 is 5 feet 11 with shoes on, which is basically 6 foot. It wasn’t long until other women got in on the joke to mock politicians or make pointed feminist critiques.

Now, here come the boy math crypto jokes. These include a TikTok user who joked that men use such math to claim that astrology is not real but fantasy football and crypto very much are. Meanwhile, a couple of Blockworks reporters got in on the act, with one writing on X that “boy math is investing thousands of dollars into crypto then being worried that a woman only wants to be with u for ur internet money.”

Another joked that “Boy math is buying a bored ape then asking their date to split a $50 check.” Meanwhile, some guys on social media latched on to the idea of “boy math” to make light of the crypto bear market and assure themselves that having bought various memecoins made financial sense.

The boy math jokes are just the latest example of popular culture calling out a perceived gender tilt in crypto. In July, Barbie star Margaret Robbie told a morning show, in reference to her boyfriend, that “When David and Tom would start talking about Bitcoin or something, Greta and I would be like, ‘You’re being such Kens'”—adding she felt the same way when the guys discussed golf.

The reality, of course, is that crypto is hardly exclusive to men. A growing number of women have come to invest in digital assets in recent years. Meanwhile, some of the most prominent figures in the industry—from entrepreneurs Kathleen Breitman and Caitlin Long to investors like Amy Wu and Li Jin—are female. But as with most stereotypes, there is a grain of truth to the notion that crypto involves some boy math.

Jeff John Roberts
jeff.roberts@fortune.com
@jeffjohnroberts

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