LEIGH: Leader to Watch: Elena Giralt Talks Zcash and Feminism
CoinDesk Podcast Network
CoinDesk
4.8 • 689 Ratings
🗓️ 7 March 2020
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
CoinDesk reporter Leigh Cuen is joined by Elena Giralt, the Electric Coin Company’s product marketing associate known for her research on cryptocurrency usage in Latin America, to talk about how digital assets can subvert power dynamics.
According to the Brookings Institute, roughly 4.6 million Venezuelans have fled the country so far, which the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees called the largest exodus in the region’s recent history. Many such refugees and diaspora Venezuelans use cryptocurrency for remittances or to earn freelance income. But, as Giralt pointed out, the industry at-large has a long way to go to improve ethical marketing in the region.
“Adoption has been overstated by companies that have a vested interest,” she said. “If you’re going to promote a certain solution or initiative in a vulnerable population, there’s really a higher bar for disclosures and informed consent.”
Consent is, from Giralt’s perspective, the underlying principle of cypherpunk technology. Later, we'll discuss how financial privacy is crucial to women’s rights and free, easy ways for people to empower women in their local communities.
Want more? Leigh also has an article about Venezuelans using cryptocurrency.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Being able to control your information and withhold information that pertains to you is absolutely |
| 0:08.0 | related to your identity, agency, and therefore personal freedom. Privacy has always existed. |
| 0:17.0 | It's just been something that is very contingent on your ability to afford it. |
| 0:22.5 | And in a world where more people have access to privacy, I think more people will have |
| 0:27.4 | agency and determination and control. |
| 0:33.5 | Hello, I'm CoinDesk reporter Lee Quinn here with Electric Coin Company's Product Marketing |
| 0:38.3 | Associate, Elena Gertolt, founder of the Latinx blockchain meetup group, here to talk about |
| 0:43.4 | grassroots leadership and what that means in the crypto space. |
| 0:46.0 | Thanks for joining us today, Elena. |
| 0:47.3 | Lee, thanks for having me. |
| 0:49.3 | I want to start us off since you're a Venezuelan American, and I remember your studies and your research from, I think it was 2017 or 2018. |
| 0:59.0 | Yeah, I started researching crypto adoption in Latin America, but Venezuela specifically around 2017, early 2018. |
| 1:07.9 | Can you start us off a little bit of context about what it was you found when you were |
| 1:11.5 | researching as opposed to the kind of Bitcoin savior porn that we were seeing at the time? |
| 1:16.6 | So I got started in this space. I was in grad school. I was looking for a research topic to focus in on. |
| 1:24.5 | I just so happened to be Venezuelan. and so it seemed like a nice way to intersect my |
| 1:31.1 | personal background, my family, and also just kind of this really complicated experience |
| 1:37.0 | that a lot of Venezuelans go through, which was the humanitarian crisis that the country |
| 1:42.6 | is still going through, this newfound |
| 1:45.8 | interest of crypto. |
| 1:47.7 | So when I started studying it, I think one of the reasons why my perspective was so unique |
| 1:54.5 | is because I was able to talk to people kind of like in-country, get a bunch of different voices around the table, |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from CoinDesk, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of CoinDesk and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.