The coalition, which includes Reps. Joyce Beatty (Ohio), Al Green (Texas), Bill Foster (Illinois), and Stephen Lynch (Massachusetts), urged the nation’s largest crypto, Web3, and digital assets companies and VC firms to disclose data on their diversity and inclusion policies.
The lawmakers hope that the gathered data would greatly aid their efforts to “understand how and whether the industry is working toward a more equitable environment for everyone.” Upon request, companies are asked to complete the questionnaire about their diversity policies from the calendar year of 2021. The questionnaire itself, however, wasn’t made publicly available.
“There is a concerning lack of publicly available data to effectively evaluate the diversity among America’s largest digital assets companies, and the investment companies with significant investments in these companies. We believe transparency is a critical, first step to achieving racial and gender equity,” the letter reads.
The full list of companies that received a request includes Aave, Andreessen Horowitz, Binance.US, Circle, Coinbase, Crypto.com, Digital Currency Group, FTX, Gemini, Haun Ventures, Kraken, OpenSea, PancakeSwap, Paradigm, Paxos, Ripple, Sequoia Capital, Stellar Development Foundation, and Tether. The deadline for responding to the survey is set for September 2.
Meanwhile, the crypto industry is still a predominantly male field, as women make up only 26% of cryptocurrency investors, Gemini’s 2021 State of US crypto shows. However, recent research reveals that the rate of women involved in crypto is slowly increasing, suggesting that the gender gap in the industry becomes thinner.
