When Caroline Ellison strode into court this week to testify against one-time romantic and business partner Sam Bankman-Fried, I felt several things as a woman who has built a company in the same industry. The first was that I had made a mistake on passing on that lovely YSL jacket Ellison was sporting for the trial.
My next thought was a more serious one: Until the collapse of the rotten FTX empire, Ellison—the former CEO of Bankman-Fried’s hedge fund, Alameda Research—had been one of the few, the proud, the women in cryptocurrency with an executive title. My running joke used to be “there are women in crypto—the problem is that I know them all.”
There aren’t many of us around, and the reasons are almost exclusively cultural. Look no further than X (formerly Twitter), where reports about the substance of Ellison’s testimony have been eclipsed by deeply cruel comments about her physical appearance. It left the impression that Ellison had become yet another casualty of the web of lies spun up by her ex-boyfriend and boss.
In theory, crypto has nothing to do with gender—it’s a technology and cultural phenomenon that allows for value transfer on the internet without an intermediary. However, unlike banks or credit card companies, cryptocurrencies began as hobbyist projects and most of their early mythologies came to life on message boards like Reddit or 4Chan. The distinct humor and jargon surrounding crypto mimics that of the almost exclusively male spaces in which it was forged.
Early crypto culture helped sow what would become a massive demographic disparity in the industry. It is not as bad as it used to be. The “women question” in crypto abated in part due to the boom in NFTs, which brought in an infusion of female faces from the art world, and helped make the overall vibe in crypto more pleasant. Or at least tolerable.
But the doyens of cryptocurrencies are still scruffy ragamuffin boyish types who are very online and tweet too much as part of carefully crafted internet personas. In her testimony, Ellison exposed how Bankman-Fried’s disheveled appearance was just an extension of the digital efforts he made to disguise who he really was. All of it fit together to project a fiction: “Too caught up in work and ideas to care about things like hygiene and social graces!”
As for the case of fraud and misappropriation of funds made against SBF, as a businesswoman, it seems straightforward. From its inception, the FTX exchange ran as a passthrough to take customer deposits to fund Alameda. Eventually Ellison was appointed CEO of Alameda and inherited these corporate policies. (To be sure, the same Twitter culture that now makes fun of her appearance once lauded her ability to pump “Sam coins” associated with FTX to their benefit.) The grift caught up with them when the gigantic hole in solubility was pointed out by reporter Ian Allison, who intercepted an Alameda balance sheet.
The final thing that struck me in light of Ellison’s testimony is how unsophisticated the entire FTX/Alameda hustle really was—more like the plot of a Coen brothers film than a swindle designed by geniuses. For instance, how did Ellison enjoy nearly unlimited credit and a close relationship with a kingmaker exchange—and still fail to make Alameda constantly profitable? As her testimony exposed, the entire operation ran on a culture of stealing, yet they still couldn’t balance the books?
Telling still is the fact that Ellison was not the face of the fraud she uniquely facilitated. Once it’s all said and done, SBF will go down as a genius for his ability to turn his disheveled appearance into billions—at least temporarily. The man knew his market.
A friend of mine who works for an actor-turned-investor once remarked: “He’s usually cast in roles as a dummy, but he’s super smart. People don’t see it coming, and isn’t that better than the other direction?” After this week of testimony in SBF’s case, I think it would be hard to disagree.
Women are constantly underestimated in crypto and elsewhere, and one day that will be their strength. In the meantime, the industry’s obsession with schlubs will be its folly.
Kathleen Breitman is a cofounder of Tezos. The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.
