Ville

Prologue

Yesterday was a sunny day. I took with me a book about the history of Finnish civil resistance and walked along the one and only river in Turku.

Sitting down, closing my eyes, and facing the sun like a salamander, I very soon hear someone talking to me. Grrr.

Even though he sat three meters from me, I could smell his breath. Although he was hammered, midly speaking , he was a nice chap to talk with. We immediately got to talk about climate change, politics, and woke culture.

He mentioned how he dislikes “wokists”. I am flabbergasted: What does that word even mean? I asked him, but he could only muster a few words, “people are now racist against white heterosexual men”. I cringed a little. So you hate something that you don’t even understand yourself? It seems like you have an opinion about something just for the sake of it. I asked if a “woke person” has hurt you. He said no. Huh.

Later in the evening, I attended an event in Bar Ö focused on feminist expression where participants created a coordinated wave of cursewords, similar to crowd waves seen at sports events. Viiiiiiittttuuuuuu!!!!!#&!/(!

The group collectively voiced frustration about various gender-related issues in society, including male-only military service requirements, sexist behavior towards women (including discrimination and power dynamics), and the cultural tendency to stigmatise or silence women’s experiences and concerns.

It was fun and sad at the same time. Yet I laughed more than I cried. I could relate to a lot of the points. I was frustrated for them and felt a lot of sympathy.

This motivated me to write about I know most: Bitcoin.

Is Bitcoin Feminist?

A normal person might say, “I don’t see the connection?” The average Bitcoiner on Nostr or Twitter would probably say, “LOL, no.” And yet, if you squint at Bitcoin long enough, tilt your head to the side, and pretend you don’t see all the laser-eyed guys with “hard money” in their bios, you might just say, “Well, actually…”

As you might know, Bitcoin was created by a mysterious person (or people) named Satoshi Nakamoto. Nobody knows who they are, but if you had to guess, they were probably a man. Why? Because the early Bitcoin community was made up of cryptographers, libertarians, and people on obscure internet forums. And in 2009, that group was about 99% male.

Bitcoin also attracts a certain kind of guy, a crypto bro. The kind who talks about “sound money” and “fiat slavery” while yelling at you to “have fun staying poor.” These guys don’t exactly radiate feminism. They like about all the great things Trump administration and Elon Musk is doing to crypto. F*** ethics?

So, by culture? No, Bitcoin is not feminist.

The thing about Bitcoin, though, is that it doesn’t care. It doesn’t care who you are, what you believe, or whether you think feminism is a woke-culture conspiracy created by the them in rainbow colours. It just runs: blocks are created in predictable intervals.

That’s sort of the point. Bitcoin is decentralised. No central bank controls it. No government can stop you from using it. It doesn’t ask for permission. It doesn’t require an ID. It doesn’t care if you’re a man or a woman or a cat. If you have internet access and a bitcoin wallet, you can use it.

And if you are someone who has traditionally been excluded from the financial system—say, women in countries where they’re not allowed to own property or open a bank account—this is kind of a big deal.

Bitcoin is financial autonomy in a box. You don’t need a husband’s permission. You don’t need a credit score. You don’t even need a bank. If you can remember 12 words (or, more realistically, write them down somewhere and hope you don’t lose the paper), you can hold and transfer money in a way that nobody can take from you.

This is a pretty feminist idea.

The Traditional Financial Institutions are Patriarchal

Banks have always been gatekeepers, and those gates have often been controlled by men. Even today, women face financial discrimination. They are more likely to be underbanked. They have a harder time getting loans. They own less wealth. When you look globally, the numbers get worse. In some countries, women still can’t own land or inherit property. In others, they need a male guardian’s approval to open a bank account.

Bitcoin says: “Screw that. Here’s an alternative.”

Bitcoin is sometimes called a tool for freedom, a way to opt out of the traditional financial system. But you could also think of it as a nonviolent tool—something that doesn’t try to tear down banks or governments by force, but instead just builds something else, from the ground up. I decribed this in my thesis how Bitcoin is a nonviolent alternative, and nonviolence itself is a core feminist idea. A is B and B is C, so A is C.

In feminist thinking, power isn’t about seizing control from the top—it’s about changing the game from below. Traditional finance is hierarchical: central banks control money, governments set the rules, and regular people follow them. Bitcoin doesn’t try to overthrow that system. It just ignores it and starts fresh, bottom-up. It’s an alternative, not a coup.

Feminist ideas about power work the same way. They don’t always try to replace one ruler with another. They focus on shifting power to individuals and communities, creating new structures instead of just fighting the old ones. Bitcoin fits right into that. It doesn’t ask for permission. It doesn’t need a revolution. It just exists, and people can use it if they want to.

Which is kind of the whole point. Nonviolence—like Bitcoin—isn’t about winning a fight. It’s about making the fight irrelevant.

Furthermore, one of the things feminists dislike is coercion. Governments controlling people’s bodies. Employers underpaying women. Banks deciding who gets access to financial tools. The general structure of society telling women what they can and can’t do with their money.

Bitcoin doesn’t work that way. Nobody can inflate it away. Nobody can freeze your account. Nobody can say, “Sorry, we don’t serve women here.” It’s just math and code.

If you’re a woman fleeing domestic violence, you can store your savings in bitcoin and leave without worrying that your bank account will be emptied by your abusive partner. If you’re in a country with strict gender laws, you can work online and get paid in bitcoin without needing permission from a male relative.

It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s an option that didn’t exist before.

The funny part is that a lot of the people who love Bitcoin the most would probably hate this argument. They hate what they don’t understand. Bitcoin maximalists—at least, the loudest ones—tend to be libertarians, free-market enthusiasts, and people who post memes about “weak men creating hard times.”

They like Bitcoin because it’s outside government control. They like it because it’s scarce, and they think fiat currency is a scam. They like it because it makes them rich. They don’t like it because it helps marginalised people—at least, not on purpose.

And yet, here we are. Bitcoin, by its very nature, is a tool that helps the people traditional finance ignores. Women. The unbanked. People in oppressive regimes.

Now, just because Bitcoin can be feminist doesn’t mean it is. Because the reality is, most Bitcoin developers, miners, and investors are men.

The Bitcoin community can be hostile to women. Crypto conferences are full of dudes. Women in tech industry report getting dismissed, harassed, or simply ignored. And while Bitcoin should be a neutral, open system, in practice, the people building and promoting it shape its culture.

So if Bitcoin is going to be feminist in more than just theory, it needs more women actually using it, developing it, and talking about it.

Without intentional participation from marginalised groups, Bitcoin risks replicating existing power asymmetries. Thus, while Bitcoin’s architecture presents an opportunity for feminist financial autonomy, its sociopolitical realisation depends on who wields its potential.

Bitcoin is not inherently feminist. Satoshi Nakamoto didn’t write the white paper thinking about gender equality. The loudest Bitcoin fans are not exactly feminists. And the tech spheres, in general, have a serious diversity problem.

It is a tool that structurally resists centralised control, financial gatekeeping, and economic coercion. And that means it can be a powerful tool for women too, especially those who have been excluded from traditional finance.

Whether Bitcoin becomes feminist in practice depends on who uses it. If women adopt it, if feminist thinkers engage with it, if more diverse people shape its future—then Bitcoin could be one of the tools for feminists.

Either way, the honeybadger doesn’t care.