Women of BSV: We’re not an oppressed minority, we’re just asking different questions

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If you thought digital currency was just another financial ‘boys club,’ you may need to think again. The Women of BSV group is committed to carving out a place for women in a male-dominated industry.

Ruth Heasman and Diddy Wheldon are the two founders of the group which describes itself on Twitter as “down to earth & welcoming.” On their YouTube channel they cover events, conduct interviews with BSV entrepreneurs and influencers and create educational videos for those looking to learn about Bitcoin.

Ruth explains that the women don’t feel side-lined or oppressed: they are simply trying to “provide marketing and education and entertainment, just with a different slant that has more appeal to women because…a lot of it is quite dry.”

While they may find some BSV coverage too academic, they didn’t feel that way about the CoinGeek Conference in New York last week. On this week’s episode of CoinGeek Conversations, Diddy says she thought the speakers were “phenomenal.”

Both women were impressed by Jeff Baek’s presentation, demonstrating a new product that allows users to ‘Send Money Like Magic’ over the internet. PeerSend, which has been launched as a Google Chrome browser extension, allows users to send Bitcoin SV easily to anybody, even if they don’t have a BSV wallet.

Ruth believes that this idea perfectly solves the problem of onboarding that BSV faces and that it could be used as a guerrilla marketing technique for targeting and winning over prospective users. She goes further, saying that Jeff will “reinvent the internet” if he delivers on his promise to allow people to use PeerSend to shop on sites like Amazon without even needing to sign up.

Ruth and Diddy also enjoyed Dr. Craig Wright’s conversation with veteran technologists W. Scott Stornetta, Stuart Haber and Ian Grigg, calling it a “real history lesson.” They admit they hadn’t been aware that timestamping—invented by Stornetta and Haber—had been around for so many years and were surprised that it has taken the world so long to realise the value of having an immutable ledger.

Ruth also enjoyed what she calls Craig’s “semi-annual bollocking.” She believes it’s important for developers in the ecosystem to have this encouragement to work harder and keep building.

“That’s what’s leaving BTC behind in the dust because there’s no development happening and there’s really nothing to talk about at conferences. So I’d rather have the Craig Wright approach of a stern headmaster telling everybody to get back to work.”

Diddy agrees that the dialogue in the BSV ecosystem is preferable to the “number go up” rhetoric that permeates the BTC Core narrative. She highlights the importance of people doing their homework to see how and why Bitcoin was built rather than just looking at rising charts.

Education is not the only goal for the Women of BSV. They are also hoping to bring a new perspective to businesses. Ruth says, “We’re trying to provide a bit of light relief really…in a more sort of chatty way. And we’re quite interested in the people themselves, the entrepreneurs so we’re asking slightly different questions and having a bit of fun with it.”

Hear the whole of Ruth Heasman and Diddy Wheldon’s interview in this week’s CoinGeek Conversations podcast or catch up with other recent episodes:

You can also watch the podcast video on YouTube.

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