Crypto Bros Created Influencer Rachel Siegel Butt of the Joke at Bitcoin Conference in Miami

Cryptocurrencies are not known to be the most sexist space. But even crypto influencer Rachel Siegel never imagined that a recent industry event would end with a sneaky photo of her ass going viral on Twitter — and an employee Conference members appreciated it all.

Siegel, 30, is a former substitute teacher who claims to have made millions of dollars in crypto by investing small amounts starting in 2017. She now runs a Twitter account with over 194,000 followers under @CryptoFinally, where she tweets about markets, industry news, and her own life.

On April 9, Siegel was among 25,000 crypto fans at the Bitcoin code 2022 conference — a four-day grandstand for early crypto fans. Siegel told The Daily Beast she was waiting in line for the mechanical bull — one of the conference’s sponsored games — when another conference attendee struck up a friendly chat. Siegel said she thought nothing of it at the time and enjoyed the rest of the day.

However, when she got home and clicked on Twitter, she was greeted with a snap of the back of her car. The man at the conference apparently took a picture of her when she wasn’t looking and posted it on Twitter with a single word: “lol.”

The man posted the photo as a retweet of Siegel herself: a selfie she had taken earlier that day. His photo is obviously less flattering — a close-up of her back was taken from behind, her bra looking noticeably less sexy. The tweet was clearly meant to highlight the difference.

Commenters quickly jumped on the replies to mock Siegel. (“How do we serve them lapel?” By the time she saw it, Siegel said, the photo had already been shared by many well-known crypto accounts.

For Siegel and others, the incident is just another example of harassment some women face in the crypto space. Just like in the traditional finance sector, women make up a much larger number in the crypto space, making up less than 5% of the most prominent crypto entrepreneurs and just 15% of the total. Bitcoin trader. Many women say that imbalance leads to an uncomfortable and sometimes threatening guys’ club atmosphere.

In the past, women have reported non-consensual touching, inappropriate questioning and unwanted appearances at industry events. In a famous example, an after-party for the 2018 North American Bitcoin Conference was held at a strip club in Miami. One attendee told Bloomberg: “We were a bunch of rich guys in our 20s. “We like nude girls.”

As a crypto influencer, Siegel is used to online harassment. But the photo is the result of a real-world encounter at a conference that claims it’s “dedicated to providing a distraction-free conference experience for all attendees.” She tweeted about the incident, calling the man’s behavior and subsequent interaction with his post “disgusting”, while also sending a direct message to the organizers. conference asked about their harassment policy. (At the time, she believed the photographer had won the bull-riding contest and asked if he would still receive the prize: one bitcoin, or about $40,000. later confirmed that he did not win.)

Hours passed with no response, until one of Siegel’s followers suggested starting an email thread with her and some of the conference organizers. Organizers were quick to respond to that thread, according to screenshots Siegel provided to The Daily Beast, and appear to be trying to track down paparazzo-hunting. Siegel says she feels like they’re making progress.

The next day, Siegel received a response to a direct message she sent to the official Bitcoin conference Twitter account, from an employee who identified himself with his personal Twitter handle. Siegel searched Twitter for handles and found one user who identified himself as a conference worker. He tagged both the conference and its sponsor, Bitcoin Magazine, in his bio.

Siegel has also “liked” a number of tweets mocking her and a sneak peek of her butt. She was stunned.

“Oh, you were mistaken,” she wrote to the official conference account, attaching screenshots of tweets employees have liked. “The conduct on behalf of the conference organizers is completely unacceptable. Thank you for identifying yourself. ”

The official account responded using a smiley emoji response to her message.

“Dear crypto,” the employee wrote back. “My personal account has nothing to do with this account. Feel free to voice your concert[sic] for our support team. ”

The Daily Beast attempted to contact the conference via multiple channels, including by calling the company’s events director at the number listed on his email signature. When the female reporter recognized him, the man replied saying it was a wrong number and abruptly hung up. The conference’s head of public relations also did not respond to multiple emails seeking comment.

The photo breakdown continued to spiral in the days that followed. Siegel responded to an email thread with the conference organizers, alerting them to messages from the Twitter account. Around the same time, the employee removed the official conference cards from his Twitter profile, leading some online to speculate that Siegel got him fired. Many people call her “Karen.”

Meanwhile, crypto enthusiasts are hotly debating whether to post a secret photo of the back of someone’s car. really constituted sexual harassment, and whether Siegel can honestly cry, since she’s posted selfies of her butt before.

One user wrote: “Anyone who posts their pictures on the internet deserves to be criticized. “Still milking this?” another mocked.

Conference CEO David Bailey finally weighed in on a Twitter thread, writing that he despised “bullshits” but wanted to build a “dope community” where people were “free from harassment because of the bad things they can’t change.”

“Someone on our team interacted with a stupid tweet from our official account. Extremely immature and I find it frustrating,” he wrote. “They’ve been severely reprimanded but everyone makes mistakes and I’m not going to fire them for that.”

Bailey, 31, also urged anyone harassing women at the conference to “don’t be a damn loser”, adding: “Bitcoin is for women [sic] too.”

“My mom, sisters, aunts, wives, daughters are all at the convention and the moment one of them gets upset, I kill an asshole,” he wrote.

Siegel was not impressed. “The CEO’s official response to the conference administrator harassing me was ‘everyone makes mistakes’ and I should have had a man at the conference to ‘kll a mf’ for me,” she said. he tweeted.

Emails between Siegel and the conference organizers became increasingly tense, with Siegel’s attorney saying he had hired a litigator and requesting contact with BTC Media’s attorneys. The company’s head of human resources, Nick Beaird, responded by saying he saw no legal problems.

Beaird also informed Siegel that he could not identify the photographer, and would not be able to reveal his identity even if he did. As for employees who enjoy mocking tweets, he said the company will “investigate the entire situation” and “take measures… consistent with our policies and practices.” He did not specify what those policies and practices were.

In a final email to the company, to which Beaird did not respond, Siegel wrote: “The behavior of you and everyone involved is despicable. If you could take a moment to step outside of whatever power game you’re playing right now and look at the situation maybe you can realize how awful this has been for me and How painful it really is. ”

During the entire affair, Siegel said, she heard from other women who had similar experiences at crypto events. Kelsey Cole, Co-Founder and Cryptocurrency Investor, answered for one of Siegel’s tweets stating that she has received rape threats, death threats and bomb threats since joining the industry. Another woman, Amanda Goetz, tweeted that she recently heard from several women in the Bitcoin space about being sexually assaulted. “I no longer attend crypto events for this reason (unless hosted by women),” she tweeted.

Siegel said she was nervous telling the media about the incident for fear it would further ostracize her in the industry. But the texts she received from other women also convinced her that speaking out was necessary.

“The only person on the internet is me, but there are dozens of women too scared to come out because of what happened to me,” she said.

She added: “I don’t think this is a life-and-death story with my ass.”