Speaker 1: I'm Stacy Marie Ishmael, Managing editor of Crypto for Bloomberg News,
Speaker 1: and this is Bloomberg Crypto, a daily Bloomberg I Heart podcast.
Speaker 1: It's Wednesday, July six. I don't know about you, but
Speaker 1: I'm the kind of person you might describe as extremely online,
Speaker 1: and that's a description that's been true four years. I'm
Speaker 1: part of a generation that grew up with the Internet,
Speaker 1: with social networks that long predated Facebook or Twitter, and
Speaker 1: with online identities that sometimes felt more authentic than my
Speaker 1: offline self. Experimenting with who you are online, especially if
Speaker 1: those identities are really different from how you present to
Speaker 1: the analog world, that's not a totally new concept. Neil
Speaker 1: Stevenson famously coined the phrase metaverse all the way back
Speaker 1: in so it's no surprise that folks are using newish
Speaker 1: technologies like crypto on the blockchain to play with their
Speaker 1: self expression. But some folks are using blockchain enabled structures
Speaker 1: to monetize these experiments with identity, including their gender presentation.
Speaker 1: For more on crypto and identity, I'm joined by Bloomberg
Speaker 1: reporter Emily Nicole and by Florence Smith Nichols, a PhD
Speaker 1: student who researches, games, ethics, and artificial intelligence. Emily as
Speaker 1: always a pleasure to have you on the podcast. Thanks
Speaker 1: for having me. We are going to talk about crypto
Speaker 1: and money and gender identity and gender fluidity and people
Speaker 1: pretending to be other folks for the sake of monetizing
Speaker 1: that identity. But before we get into some of that,
Speaker 1: let's start with the crypto mechanics here. What are the
Speaker 1: vehicles and what are the you know, what's the why
Speaker 1: of why people are are doing this online? So I think,
Speaker 1: as it always is in crypto, there are always people
Speaker 1: seeking to find new ways to break boundary, is, to
Speaker 1: establish new forms of hierarchies in crypto and ultimately make money.
Speaker 1: And in this scenario or this universe, UM, we are
Speaker 1: looking specifically at doubts, which are decentralized autonomous organizations. You
Speaker 1: could think of them a little bit like companies, but
Speaker 1: they operate almost exclusively on a code first basis, so
Speaker 1: everything they do is voted on by the community, using
Speaker 1: blockchain contracts to execute those functions once they pass or
Speaker 1: get rejected. And they usually have a group of people
Speaker 1: at the top rather than a single person. And there's
Speaker 1: that that group is it's like a governance committee, it's
Speaker 1: a board, it's a what what how does that work? Really?
Speaker 1: So the people at the top might be the founders
Speaker 1: of the project that we're talking about. They might be
Speaker 1: people who have run their way up through the group
Speaker 1: by contributing a lot to the to the community and
Speaker 1: therefore have been decided that they have warranted themselves a
Speaker 1: leadership position. But you won't have somebody who's the CEO
Speaker 1: or you know, the CFO or whatever. You might have
Speaker 1: somebody who's in charge of treasury, for example, to you
Speaker 1: to use the crypto terminology, but you're not going to
Speaker 1: have somebody who you know, like does the analysts call
Speaker 1: at nine am after the earnings? So this is it's
Speaker 1: a club and there are members and then there are
Speaker 1: people who, you know, listening to their members most of
Speaker 1: the time decide how what the club's priorities are, what
Speaker 1: they're going to spend as you say, their treasury onto
Speaker 1: the money or the crypto that they have in the bank,
Speaker 1: as it were. But what do dows have to do
Speaker 1: with gender identity? So in this world, as people seek
Speaker 1: to kind of break the boundaries of what crypto can
Speaker 1: mean or what it can be represented for they're also
Speaker 1: trying to find ways that crypto could be something more
Speaker 1: appealing to the mainstream. And if we think about, you know,
Speaker 1: the ways in which we engage with social media and
Speaker 1: the role of influences in that um, we've been seeing
Speaker 1: the rise of something called simp dows over the last
Speaker 1: few months and maybe even a year. Can I just
Speaker 1: gonna stopulate? Did you say simple? Yes? So, to simple
Speaker 1: means basically to be a fan of somebody, but in
Speaker 1: typical Internet language, it's always pretty aloaded, and so simping
Speaker 1: generally happens from a male fan to a female influencer
Speaker 1: who is considered to be quite beautiful. And so in
Speaker 1: this world of simpows, some female influencers are using the
Speaker 1: mechanics of crypto and these miniature organizations to basically allow
Speaker 1: a bit more of a developed relationship between them and
Speaker 1: their fan base. The fans can contribute to the tao,
Speaker 1: contribute to the US's reputation, deciding on what projects she
Speaker 1: should take on or not, but then in return they
Speaker 1: might gain something in the form of a reward like
Speaker 1: a crypto token or an n f T, which they
Speaker 1: can then used to kind of give back to the
Speaker 1: community again, it becomes like a little circle of financial value.
Speaker 1: I guess you could call it. So is this like
Speaker 1: only fans on the blockchain? I mean you could consider
Speaker 1: it that slightly. There are some dows that have been
Speaker 1: set up that are slightly sexual in sure, if that's
Speaker 1: what we think of as only found his main business model.
Speaker 1: So and there are even dolls that have been set
Speaker 1: up to honor female influences without that person's permission or knowledge.
Speaker 1: One of the most prominent ones that was reported on
Speaker 1: by Vice not long ago is one in tribute to
Speaker 1: Belle Delphine, who is known as a gamer girl, and
Speaker 1: she very famously tried to set off her bathwater adoring fans,
Speaker 1: and as far as we know, she was not involved
Speaker 1: in that because at the time anyway, she had been
Speaker 1: offline from the Internet for about a year. But there
Speaker 1: are also, you know, versions of these dolls that don't
Speaker 1: involve anything of a sexual nature. So one of the
Speaker 1: prominent ones that I spoke to for um this story
Speaker 1: was a dow belonging to an influencer called Irene Zoo,
Speaker 1: and in her dow, she mainly just uses it as
Speaker 1: a way to interact with her fans, on a more
Speaker 1: unique and direct level than she'd been able to previously
Speaker 1: in Instagram, where she found that d ms are pretty
Speaker 1: inefficient in your reporting. In the story that you wrote
Speaker 1: about this, one of the mean characters, or otherwise I
Speaker 1: supposed they were playing two characters at once, is someone
Speaker 1: named Eric Wall who has a SIMP dow as we've
Speaker 1: discussed under the name of Erica Wall. Can you see
Speaker 1: more about this? Yes, So, Eric Wall is the chief
Speaker 1: investment officer at a crypto asset fund. But he's also
Speaker 1: a pretty big personality on crypto Twitter as we call it.
Speaker 1: He's got more than eighty thousand followers, and he's known
Speaker 1: for being kind of a bit of an expert on
Speaker 1: all things crypto and therefore tends to get into full
Speaker 1: online disputes with people over the mechanics of krypto and
Speaker 1: blockchain mechanics. But one thing that he found over the
Speaker 1: last few years is that occasionally, when somebody wanted to
Speaker 1: make fun of him, they would photoshop him in a
Speaker 1: picture of a woman, so they'd give him, you know,
Speaker 1: long hair and mascara and breasts and all the rest,
Speaker 1: And eventually he said he that one of those pictures
Speaker 1: was good enough that he decided to take that picture
Speaker 1: for himself and reclaim it. And he had been advising
Speaker 1: dows like Irene's for quite a while, and so he
Speaker 1: started Arikadao as, as he said, a way to kind
Speaker 1: of model out how easy it could be to set
Speaker 1: up one of these symptows for Instagram influences, and in
Speaker 1: his mind, I think a use it as a way
Speaker 1: to kind of encourage more influences to take up this
Speaker 1: this mechanics and make blockchain more mainstream, but be raise
Speaker 1: his own influence um and find more ways to engage
Speaker 1: with the people who interact with him online. Now that
Speaker 1: there's something that you said about the fans that I
Speaker 1: that I want to point out because I feel like
Speaker 1: there's a central tension here, which is the people who
Speaker 1: were following him online. We're trying to make fun of
Speaker 1: him by portraying him as a woman, which, let's be clear,
Speaker 1: is a super sexist thing to do, right, like the
Speaker 1: the idea that the worst thing you could do to
Speaker 1: a man is make him look like a woman. M hm,
Speaker 1: And so okay, fine, like you, Crypto represents all of
Speaker 1: the dysfunction of society because it is a part of
Speaker 1: society as always. But he then is like, I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna I'm going to lean into this, ha ha, I'm
Speaker 1: going to reclaim this. I'm going to mon as high
Speaker 1: is this. Has he gotten any kind of support or
Speaker 1: criticism in either direction from this, almost like costly? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I think you'd expect there to be some negative backlash, right,
Speaker 1: You'd expect there to be some backlash to the fact
Speaker 1: that a man is portraying himself as a woman online
Speaker 1: and creating some sort of monetary flow around that, whether
Speaker 1: or not he decides to use it for personal gain,
Speaker 1: personal profit or not. But actually, he said though there
Speaker 1: was on some level of a bit of confusion from
Speaker 1: some people as to why he would set up a
Speaker 1: dow in the name of Erica. Most people thought it
Speaker 1: was funny. Most people weren't on the joke, and most
Speaker 1: people thought, you know, if I want to contribute to this,
Speaker 1: I can. But he started then using the persona as
Speaker 1: a way to bring attention to causes like the plight
Speaker 1: to Ukraine and how you could donate to that with crypto,
Speaker 1: and also again bringing more attention to some of the
Speaker 1: work that he'd been doing with other simp dows, like
Speaker 1: irenes so in essence, while there was some expectation of
Speaker 1: a negative reaction, it wasn't necessarily what he told me
Speaker 1: is what he got back. But there are folks and
Speaker 1: you you didn't include these examples in your story who
Speaker 1: are not necessarily as transparent about what they're doing, not
Speaker 1: necessarily encryptal, but in other sort of formats like live
Speaker 1: streaming or streaming games, who are also engaging in this
Speaker 1: kind of gender performance. Yeah. So there is a trend
Speaker 1: that is very, very popular and still ongoing in places
Speaker 1: like YouTube and Twitch, where sis men will dress up
Speaker 1: as women and while the people who are watching their
Speaker 1: streams or their videos are in on the joke. They'll
Speaker 1: often go on platforms like amigle, which is a site
Speaker 1: that randomly assigns you another person over video chat to
Speaker 1: talk to and pretend to be a woman. Everybody who's
Speaker 1: watching knows what's going on, like you know, in the
Speaker 1: background when they're watching these videos, but the person they're
Speaker 1: talking to is being duped, and and therein lies. I
Speaker 1: guess the humor or the attraction and the world of
Speaker 1: simptows is in some ways that you know, there are
Speaker 1: always going to be people who are coming to something
Speaker 1: like eric Odow, what the dow that Erica has set
Speaker 1: up and not know who he is, and not know
Speaker 1: who that person is behind the photoshop damage in front
Speaker 1: of it. He even went to like a recent Bitcoin
Speaker 1: conference with Eric Odoa as his name um and has
Speaker 1: used things like voice modulators on podcast to appear as
Speaker 1: Erica previously. But in essence, I guess that the message
Speaker 1: that he was pushing is that that isn't his intention. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, we all know that intentions always leads to
Speaker 1: fantastic outcomes. So thank you very much, Emily. That was
Speaker 1: a very interesting story and I appreciate you taking the
Speaker 1: time to share it with our audience today. Thanks for
Speaker 1: having me. You can find more of Emily's reporting on
Speaker 1: the Bloomberg Terminal on Bloomberg dot com and follower on
Speaker 1: twit her. She's at Emily J. Nicole. That's n I
Speaker 1: CEO l L. We'll be right back with more from
Speaker 1: Florence Smith Nichols about the ethical implications of gender fluidity
Speaker 1: in a DOW universe. In the metaverse, you can be
Speaker 1: anyone or anything you want to be. Now that we
Speaker 1: have more an idea about how the dows work, I'm
Speaker 1: going to turn to Florence Smith Nichols to give us
Speaker 1: a little bit more insights on the moral and ethical
Speaker 1: implications of gender fluidity and the blockchain. Florence, such a
Speaker 1: pleasure to have you in the studio today, virtually or otherwise.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for having me. You are a specialist
Speaker 1: in some very very interesting areas of research, and you know,
Speaker 1: our audience just heard from Emily who interviewed you for
Speaker 1: a story about gender presentation and crypto and the blockchain,
Speaker 1: and I'd love for you to say a little bit
Speaker 1: more about what you've encountered in the realm of online
Speaker 1: gender performance. I know now we're talking about kind of crypto,
Speaker 1: the metaverse, the blockchain, but people ex perimenting with gender
Speaker 1: expression online and in kind of a virtual context has
Speaker 1: been happening really sort of, I think as long as
Speaker 1: those places have existed, And certainly my kind of expertise
Speaker 1: is particularly in video games and my favorite that's yeah,
Speaker 1: that's something that I think you here, for example, in
Speaker 1: the trans community sort of like countless stories of people
Speaker 1: saying that the first time I really started to experiment
Speaker 1: with kind of a different gender expression was through like say,
Speaker 1: choosing a different avatar in a video game or something
Speaker 1: like that, because it represents sort of like a safe
Speaker 1: space to do. So when you were talking to Emily,
Speaker 1: one of the things that I found interesting that she
Speaker 1: reported in the context of the conversation was about how
Speaker 1: the pandemic was a moment for people to be able
Speaker 1: to do more of this kind of exploration in a
Speaker 1: crypto context or otherwise Can you say some more about that? Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: I think it's really interesting that it seems to have
Speaker 1: been this kind of you see this trend of people
Speaker 1: discovering kind of new aspects about themselves that maybe they
Speaker 1: just didn't feel that they had the time to do
Speaker 1: so before. And I wonder if, especially because a lot
Speaker 1: of our interactions just had to be online by necessity,
Speaker 1: and because online interactions allow you to potentially kind of
Speaker 1: play around with your identity, whether that can be a
Speaker 1: something right as simple as even oh you change your
Speaker 1: Twitter profile picture, right, And a lot of this conversation
Speaker 1: around crypto and things like meme stocks really really hit
Speaker 1: the mainstream during the pandemic, right, so at least the
Speaker 1: time lines were overlapping. And as part of that, as
Speaker 1: you as you've discussed with Emily, previously was this kind
Speaker 1: of distinction between I suppose, a sincere exploration in the
Speaker 1: way that you're describing of people, you know, finding out
Speaker 1: who they really were, and a more cynical, potentially performance
Speaker 1: for some other motivation or game or gain. Where in
Speaker 1: the what we call the simple Dowel context, do you
Speaker 1: see that spectrum? I feel like that this kind of
Speaker 1: trying to draw a line between people, yeah, kind of
Speaker 1: genuinely exploring the identity versus perhaps yet what you would
Speaker 1: see as a more cynical kind of way of trying
Speaker 1: to exploit a kind of performative identity is really tricky
Speaker 1: because especially from an outside perspective if you don't know
Speaker 1: the people involved. But it's the more kind of cynical
Speaker 1: examples that hurt or kinds of people, especially trans people.
Speaker 1: You know, A big part of transphobia is people being
Speaker 1: accused of being fake, right, right, not just pretending, so
Speaker 1: you can see how Yeah, it's a really difficult topic.
Speaker 1: But I think with the simp dows specifically, I mean
Speaker 1: even just in the name, I guess that it was
Speaker 1: kind of revealing, right, It kind of kind of it
Speaker 1: tells you what kind of level that's at, and it's
Speaker 1: something that's fill I guess it's kind of generalization, but
Speaker 1: I guess for the male gays in a very particular way,
Speaker 1: and it's not about sort of an individual exploring their identity.
Speaker 1: It's a group kind of around this kind of avatar
Speaker 1: in order to potentially leverage getting more money out of people.
Speaker 1: I guess essentially in the context of you know, video games,
Speaker 1: the metavers and communities, are you seeing any spaces where
Speaker 1: it's more how should I say, supportive or constructive of
Speaker 1: gender exploration compared to maybe what we're seeing in crypto
Speaker 1: I think vrchide. Yeah, I would probably from what I've
Speaker 1: seen where there seems to be um kind of just
Speaker 1: a general sense of people being very welcoming about people
Speaker 1: um kind of exploring their gender. Although at the same time,
Speaker 1: I will say, from what I've seen, like, for example,
Speaker 1: you get a lot of people who have the kind
Speaker 1: of stereotypical like anime girl kind of after which you know,
Speaker 1: you get very very large Yeah. Um. And that's kind
Speaker 1: of interesting because apparently the reason why that is is
Speaker 1: when m R chat was just kind of getting started up,
Speaker 1: a load of people sort of import a load of
Speaker 1: character models from a particular anime game, and they were
Speaker 1: a much higher quality than any of the others, so
Speaker 1: that's why people use them. So it's just kind of
Speaker 1: ended up kind of being a trend because of that.
Speaker 1: But that's that's interesting because then you get a lot
Speaker 1: of people who say, well, actually, I just feel really
Speaker 1: comfortable wearing this avatar or through having you know, kind
Speaker 1: of tried this out for a while, I realized things
Speaker 1: about my gender that I didn't know before. Um, so
Speaker 1: it seems like, yeah, from what I can see, there's
Speaker 1: definitely a lot of space exploration there. But again, like
Speaker 1: I suppose, it's like any online space right where you
Speaker 1: maybe have to be careful where you are because I
Speaker 1: think if you're kind of like a public sort of
Speaker 1: lobby space, you can meet anyone right who could just
Speaker 1: be obnoxious or potentially very rude. Well, if it's if
Speaker 1: it stops at rudeness, that would be a better better
Speaker 1: degree than some of the online harassment that we see
Speaker 1: in other places. So thank you so much, Florence. I
Speaker 1: really appreciate you joining us today. Thank you. You can
Speaker 1: find Florence on Twitter there at Florence s n. On
Speaker 1: the next episode of Bloomberg Crypto. So Rare is one
Speaker 1: of several companies attempting to take the idea of collectibles
Speaker 1: like baseball cards and bring them into a more digital context.
Speaker 1: In me so Rare announced a partnership with Major League
Speaker 1: Baseball here in the US, and they announced Serena Williams
Speaker 1: was going to be a member of their advisory board.
Speaker 1: Why is this company betting so big on sports? Do
Speaker 1: collectibles even need to be on a blockchain? And will
Speaker 1: baseball players benefit from that needure leaked deal. To explore
Speaker 1: these questions and more, I'll talk to Bloomberg reporter Hannah
Speaker 1: Miller and to Sarrere's own CEO, Nicola Julia. I'm Stacy
Speaker 1: Marie Ishmael, and this is Bloomberg Crypto, a daily podcast
Speaker 1: from Bloomberg and I Heart Radio. For more shows from
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts. Email your questions, comments,
Speaker 1: or suggestions for the show to Crypto at Bloomberg dot
Speaker 1: net and you'll find us on Twitter at Crypto. The
Speaker 1: supervising producer of this episode is Vicky ver Galina. Our
Speaker 1: producer is Mohammed Baruk. Associate producer is Zanab Sudiki Desta
Speaker 1: wonder At is our Engineer. Original music by Leo Sidron.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg's head of podcasts is Francesca Levi.