NFTs are a fantastic gateway’ to bring women into crypto, Zuckerberg Media CEO says

Zuckerberg Media CEO Randi Zuckerberg and Okcoin CEO Hong Fang join Yahoo Finance’s A Time for Change to discuss women entrepreneurs in cryptocurrency and the evolution of the metaverse.

Video Transcript

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ALEXIS CHRISTOFOUROS: Welcome to “A Time for Change,” everyone. I’m Alexis Christoforous here with Marquise Francis. We’re only a week and a half in. But so far, 2022 is not being very kind to crypto. The price of Bitcoin, which is, of course, the granddaddy of digital currency, is off to its worst annual start since the dawn of crypto, currently trading just below 40% from its all-time high of nearly $69,000 last year. And analysts are bracing for a lot more volatility ahead.

But true believers are not backing off. And more and more of them are women. Joining us now to talk about women and crypto are two trailblazers. Hong Fang is breaking barriers as one of the only female CEOs in the crypto sphere. She is the chief executive of Okcoin, one of the world’s fastest-growing crypto platforms.

We’re also joined by Randi Zuckerberg, entrepreneur, investor, and CEO of Zuckerberg Media. Welcome to you both. And thanks so much for joining us.

Randi, I want to start with you, because you’re the inaugural member of Okcoin’s board of advisors. I know that one of your primary goals in that role is having 50% of the platform have a customer base that is female by 2025. , Give us a feel for where you are now and how you hope to achieve that goal.

RANDI ZUCKERBERG: Absolutely. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having us on the show today. And you’re right, crypto is on sale right now. And if you’re anything like me for any of the women out there, you know how to shop a good sale. So thank you, crypto, for this early in the year sale that you’re having.

For me, I’ve spent the last 15 years fighting an uphill battle in tech, where I’ve routinely been the only woman in the room in almost any company, any setting, any industry. And so for me, when I first started to get excited about crypto and Web3 and this space, I saw it as an opportunity for women to get in on the ground floor. And instead of pushing a boulder uphill and traditional industries, why not just start from the beginning?

Currently, the state of crypto is very male-dominated, as in most tech, most finance. But you mentioned, we have Hong, an amazing female crypto CEO. And we have a strong vision ahead of recruiting many more women into crypto.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOUROS: So Hong, I understand 24% of your customer base is now women. Traditionally– and I’m sure I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know– women have historically been more risk-averse than men when it comes to their overall investment strategy. Crypto’s a pretty volatile asset. How do you work to change sort of the mindset of women when it comes to investing in cryptocurrencies?

HONG FANG: Yeah. I think the two biggest hurdles, one is perception. The other is education. Perception being that, in crypto, I think the perception is that it’s a male-dominated industry. But the matter of fact is, if I look around on my team and also looking at a lot of the friends that I’ve got to know over the last few years in crypto, there are a lot of female thought leadership and also a lot of significant female participants and contributors in this space, Randi included.

So I think it’s really about changing that perception that female is not really visible in crypto and the matter of fact that there are a lot of female contributors and leaders in this space. We just need to give them a lot more voice to change that perception.

And the second thing is about education. And education applies to people, regardless of whether they’re male or female because the biggest thing about crypto is that it’s actually changing the way you look at certain things. It’s changing your mental framework, looking at money, looking at how people interact with each other, how organizations are incentivized and individuals incentivized to coordinate. It is a big difference from our historical paradigm.

To get there, it takes time. It takes a lot of learning. And it takes a lot of time like this where the market is volatile, and you actually have to put your thoughts and assumptions and your learnings to test and come to the right conclusion.

So I think it takes time. And that’s obvious. But we as an industry participant would like to do a little bit more to encourage that learning experience and help people to see that actually, once you get across that curve and see what Bitcoin is really about, it can be short-term volatile, but long-term, it holds value over time.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOUROS: Randi, I’d love to understand how you’re approaching things even like NFTs, another asset where we’re seeing few women actually tip their toe. Yesterday, I interviewed “Shark Tank” investor Kevin O’Leary, who told me he’s now a crypto convert. But he actually believes the NFT market is a larger, or will be a larger addressable market than cryptocurrencies. What is your involvement, if any, in NFTs? And how do we get women involved there?

RANDI ZUCKERBERG: Yes, I’m so glad you asked that. I’m actually a huge NFT collector. And I think what’s unique about my NFT collection is that every single piece that I’ve collected has been created by a female artist or a female leader of the project. And actually, I’m so glad you mentioned it, because I think NFTs are a fantastic gateway to get more women into crypto.

I think when we think about cryptocurrency, we think that the only thing that you can do is buy and trade and sell. But what has really drawn me into crypto are so many of the things that we do naturally in business and our lives, collectibles, community, identity, buying art, buying music, things like that that are just such a natural extension of what we’re already doing in our daily lives. So I think for anyone out there who’s a newcomer into crypto, NFTs are a great way to dip your toe in and really learn about the industry in a deeper way.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOUROS: Hong, I want to get back to a point you touched on just a moment ago, and that’s sort of the idea that people getting into crypto are now seeing it as a longer-term play. When did you start to see that change among buyers, where it’s not just in and out, but people are seeing the intrinsic value crypto may have for them as a long-term investment?

HONG FANG: We have been seeing a lot of hodlers on our platform over the last two years. And that hodler percentage kept increasing actually. We see a 400% increase of Bitcoin hodlers on our platform over the last year and 300-plus hodler increase on our platform for Ethereum. So that’s definitely in play, but many times, the reality comes in different shades.

And you may have customers who hodl certain assets and then trade in others. You may also have customers who hodl a certain asset in a certain portion and then trade a piece of it, depending on market changes. So that always is part of what we see in customer behavior.

But I think ultimately when you have market situations like this, this is where people put their holdings to test and start to change their way of thinking. And if you actually zoom out a little bit more to see the crypto history, that actually played over and over again, 2016, ’17, and ’18, when there is a bull market and bear market. That’s when a lot of newcomers actually either left or stayed on to become believers. And the same thing happened before that.

So I think different cycles like this in the market actually create a little windows for people to, quote, unquote, “convert” into believers.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOUROS: I know that Okcoin recently published what you’re calling a state of cryptoverse report. And there were some interesting industry trends in there. Randi, I’m wondering what sort of your big takeaways were. I saw that young people, women, and developing nations are the biggest growth drivers, or at least were last year. Do you see that trend continuing?

RANDI ZUCKERBERG: Absolutely. I think that in the United States, we’ve been lucky to be able to have a degree of skepticism around crypto because in general, you can trust the value of your money, the banking system. But there are so many places around the world where you can’t, where thinking about creative and alternate forms of currency are crucial, not only just a nice-to-have. And so I think that was driving a lot of the trends last year and will certainly continue into this year.

I’m also very excited about the launch of a lot of tokens that have social impact, that are tied to non-profits, that are tied to causes. I think this is the year that we’ll start to see people really thinking about the tokens and the cryptocurrency that they’re investing in, not just in how much money it’s going to make them but in also some of the broader impact.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOUROS: And Hong, we just love your take on what we’re seeing happening with cryptocurrencies here. I mean, I know it’s early in the year. There were some folks who put Bitcoin at $100,000 in the next few months. Right now, it’s at about 42,000, given back a lot of its recent gains. At the end of the day, are some of these altcoins going to go away, and we’re going to see more money sort of centralized in a few coins, like Bitcoin, like Ethereum? And what is your outlook for the price of Bitcoin this year?

HONG FANG: Yeah. I think first of all that volatility is going to be expected. And that’s always the case in crypto. So anyone who gets into the space needs to be thoughtful about how they allocate their wealth in different assets in this space.

Number two, I think we’ll continue to see de-bundling of Bitcoin price and other crypto assets, given the fact that different crypto assets, including NFTs, are developing different use cases and attracting different communities. So I think it will take on different paths as they continue to move forward.

Bitcoin has still continued to be the king in the space. Compared to other crypto assets in the space, it’s probably lower-risk than many others out there. But again, the value propositions of those are very different.

And then thirdly, I think we will see continued development and building activities in this space, either in Bitcoin, on Bitcoin, alongside Bitcoin, and also in Web3, a lot of infrastructure still needs to be developed for the NFT and the Web3 to really take off. So we’ll continue to see that going on for this year.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOUROS: All right. And lastly, Randi, what excites you in the crypto space for this year? And in terms of your own portfolio, can you share with us what kind of coins are you holding at the moment?

RANDI ZUCKERBERG: Sure. Well, I’m excited that we’re just at the beginning. I know. I mean, we’ve been talking about many of these currencies for years. But it feels like we’re at the beginning of a new shift in finance and the internet. I have not honestly felt this enthusiasm since 2007-2008 at the start of Web 2.0. So I think this is a great time for anyone to really explore, to dive into NFTs and cryptocurrency.

My portfolio right now, it is very NFT-heavy, which means very Ethereum-heavy in my wallet. But I’m a Bitcoin believer as well. I think it’s a great time to get in at this price. And I like to hold a lot of the alt tokens. And I like to be involved in some of those communities as well. So I highly recommend having a diversified portfolio in crypto or in anything that you do.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOUROS: Yeah, more and more, right, it’s acting like a regular asset, where we have different classes. All right, Randi Zuckerberg of Zuckerberg Media, thank you so much. Hong Fang, CEO of Okcoin, we appreciate your time today.