A week ago, CoinTelegraph published an article about “the women who broke cryptocurrencies” in which only one non-American or non-European woman was mentioned (Maya Parbhoe).
Because I think what is happening with Bitcoin in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and Southeast Asia – regions where bitcoin is most often used as a currency and money of last resort – is much more exciting than what is happening in the United States and in the United States. Europe, I’m here to tell you about some women in the Bitcoin space from these regions who have been kicking ass in 2024.
Farida Bemba Nabourema — Nabourema is a long-time activist and human rights defender originally from Togo. She is also the lead organizer of the African Bitcoin Conference, which, for the past three years, has provided an incredible opportunity for Africans to showcase and network with Bitcoiners from around the world.
Reyna Chicas – Chicas, Salvadoran, was promoted to Director of Education for Mi Primer Bitcoin this year and also serves on the organization’s board of directors. His Bitcoin journey began just two years ago when he attended the Adopting Bitcoin conference in El Salvador as an attendee.
Roya Mahboob — Mahboob is one of Afghanistan’s first female CEOs in the tech sector. She also founded the Digital Citizen Fund, a nonprofit aimed at improving the technological literacy of Afghan women. This year it continued its efforts to set up IT centers for girls in high schools across Afghanistan and bring its education model to schools in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Nepal.
Goddess Rezkitha — Rezkitha is the Community Master for Southeast Asia for Fedi and co-founder of the Indonesian Bitcoin Community and the Indonesia Bitcoin Conference. In addition to carrying out her duties for Fedi this year, Rezkitha has traveled the world speaking about her work at events such as the Oslo Freedom Forum and Bitcoin 2024.
Lorraine Marcel — Marcel, based in Kenya, is the founder of Bitcoin Dada, a virtual Bitcoin education platform and sisterhood for African women. She was also awarded the Most Impactful African Bitcoiner of 2024 award by the African Bitcoiners group.
Lorraine Marcel (Kenyan)@marcellorraine) is our most impactful African Bitcoiner of 2024!
Through @btc_dada AND @DadaDevs empowers leaders as @waithiraah, @LindaKariu54810, @noelynesumba and many others, creating a ripple effect that is changing Africa forever.
More👇 pic.twitter.com/W84gicWVs1— African Bitcoiners ⚡ (@afribitcoiners) December 11, 2024
Isabella Santos — Santos is a co-founder of the Mexican Bitcoin community BTC Isla, based in Isla Mujeres, as well as a co-founder of the Bitcoin media outlet Get Based (which recently released a killer documentary titled “How The Federal Reserve Secretly Enslaved The World”). On top of that, she’s continued to tour the world as the host of Bitcoin Backstage this year, bringing you some juicy backstage footage from the world’s biggest Bitcoin conferences.
Noelyne Sumba — Kenya-based Sumba oversees “orange pilling operations” for Machankura, a Bitcoin Lightning wallet that can be used on feature phones. Plus, in 2024, Saifedean’s classic Ammous The Bitcoin standard it was published in Swahili and Abdi thanks to Sumba’s help in translating the text.
Hadiya Masieh — Masieh lives in London but was born to Mauritian and Ugandan parents. She is the founder of the Groundswell Project, an organization that works to promote peace and empathy between diverse communities. This year she gave a speech at the “Oslo Freedom Forum” entitled “How Bitcoin can finance counter-terrorism”, in which she highlighted how she taught Somali women how to use bitcoin for political fundraising to help support female candidates women in the country.
Janet Maingi — Kenya-based Maingi is co-founder of Gridless Compute, a company that not only profitably mined bitcoin in Africa last year but also helped bring electrification to the continent’s rural regions.
Maria Imasuen — Imasuen, of Nigerian and Filipino descent and based in Nigeria, is Fedi’s global marketing manager and a self-described “bitcoin-only gamer” who often speaks in support of THNDR Games. Even if Imasuen wasn’t around the world discussing her work in 2024, you could hear her as a guest on a podcast or on a game stream.
Honorable mentions: Renata Rodrigues (Fedi Marketing and Community Manager, originally from Brazil), Lorena Ortiz (Latin America Community Master at Fedi, based in Mexico), Edith Mpumwire (Ugandan Community Manager for Bitcoin Dada and Bitcoin Kampala supporter), Sabina Gitau (co-founder of Tando, based in Kenya), Efrat Fenigson (host of the podcast “You’re The Voice”, based in Israel)
And I’m going to give a quick shout out to some badass women crushing it this year from Europe, the US or elsewhere: Caitlin Long (the CEO of US-based Custodia Bank has filed a lawsuit against the Federal US Reserve), Susie Violet Ward (the UK-based Bitcoin journalist and CEO of Bitcoin Policy UK has written extensively about the dangers of over-regulation of the Bitcoin sector in the UK and Europe this year), Stacy Herbert (the director of the National Bitcoin Office of El Salvador (ONBTC), who notably promoted Bitcoin adoption and educational efforts throughout El Salvador), Lyudmyla Kozlovska (the Ukrainian activist has worked to help preserve privacy in Bitcoin transactions through her organization, the Open Dialogue Foundation), Anna Chekovich (the Russian Bitcoin advocate from Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation also joined the Human Rights Foundation’s Financial Freedom team), Umi Miyahara (the Japanese-American business development manager from Breez helped facilitating many new partnerships for Breez), DJ Valerie B Love (the US-based creative launched an exceptional virtual conference), NiftyNei (the technically minded developer launched the educational platform Base58), Gloria Zhao (the lead developer of Bitcoin did a great job of distilling how Bitcoin works), Ella Hough (this student helped Cornell University launch its first independent study program focused on Bitcoin), Ayelen Osorio (the writer, based in Canada, launched the newsletter Financial Freedom Report by the Human Rights Foundation) and L0la L33tz (the independent journalist has done an incredible job covering privacy regarding Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies for her publication The Rage).
I know there are countless numbers of women in the Bitcoin space that neither I nor CoinTelegraph recognized.
To those women, I apologize for not being able to include you in this piece, but I thank you for your work and your contributions to the Bitcoin space.
To learn about other amazing women in the Bitcoin space, check out Access Tribe’s “Women in Bitcoin” group.
This article is a Take. The opinions expressed are entirely the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.