Women Invest in Crypto: Interview with Bec Jones, Clutch Wallet Founder
Interviewed by Sarah McCrary
Bec Jones is co-founder and CEO of Clutch, a Crypto Wallet and education community built to provide tools and education for more women to confidently invest in the future of finance. She has been building communities and driving marketing for successful crypto projects since 2018.
Interview:
S: You’ve had success building crypto project communities over the past four years. How do you recommend women interested in this project — or crypto in general — get involved?
B: Find communities where you have a shared interest. My first project investment was in Powerledger, founded by a woman seeking to build software for distributed and decentralized energy markets for a sustainable future.
I often share these six steps to get started exploring communities and learning about crypto:
Joining twitter (following crypto influencers)
Signing up for the top crypto applications (exchange, coinmarket cap, NFT marketplace, 2 factor authentication app, discord)
Signing up for a crypto wallet
Join crypto communities in discord/telegram (you will find many projects list instructions for joining discord or telegram on their twitter profile or website.)
Jump in on basic topics by reading or watching videos
Make your first crypto purchase
We recently wrote an article on this topic.
S: Clutch has collected some interesting data about women and their preferences for crypto investing. What stands out to you? How does this data influence your design and business model?
B: We started researching women to gauge their level of interest and understanding of crypto.
65% of respondents said they haven't invested because they don’t understand it and 46% said they find it intimidating.
74% said they would use a crypto product/wallet made specifically for them.
We asked about design of the product and the top three features they were interested in were:
Education portal that pays you in crypto
More user-friendly/beautiful design
Robo-advisory investment services
We’ve taken our product direction from our growing community. We will be integrating a token and learn-and-earn education hub within the wallet experience supported with video content delivered by women. We are constantly refining and questioning our design and what design principles we will use to create a product that meets the needs of women investors and builds their confidence.
S: You called the approach to designing the Clutch crypto wallet “building money stories.” How does that come through in the product design?
B: A “money story” is a personal narrative about money. It makes up your beliefs, thoughts, and feelings about money – and affects your financial behaviors. Money stories are often generational and culturally based. We endeavor to address both the psychology and the ‘why’ women invest with emotional habits in our product design.
Goals based investing is one feature that we hope will help tie a desired goal/outcome to an investment.
We are conscious of the gamified nature of crypto investing and as such want to make sure we educate on healthy habits around investing. This will come through educational content and daily reminders that help users think about their psychology around money/value and investing. For example, are you happy with your financial situation? What emotion is attached to increasing your money? Who taught you about the value of money?
Having a space for conversations/chat within the wallet also brings out an opportunity to discuss money which is often an issue for women and tied to a story of them not having experience, knowledge or confidence to participate.
S: What is a common misconception about Crypto wallets/Crypto investing/DeFi?
B: People often don’t realize the difference between a transaction fee that a blockchain charges versus the fee an exchange or wallet charges to use their service. There is more credibility in the services that clearly outline the blockchain fee (also called gas) and the service fee of the exchange or wallet provider.
Many people come around to their appreciation for decentralized finance because of a negative experience with a centralized product. Robinhood removing access to its app last year and restricting users from cashing out their investments is an example of a centralized platform controlling the user’s assets.
Another misconception around wallets is that the wallet ‘holds’ the funds when really a crypto currency wallet and your passwords/seed phrases/keys gives you access to the blockchain where your assets reside.
S: Clutch is launching on the zkSync, an Ethereum Layer 2 technology. What motivated Clutch to choose zkSync?
B: Lower transaction costs and faster finality over Ethereum Layer 1. Argent wallet was the first cryptocurrency wallet to use zkSync and demonstrate the possibility of <$1 in transaction fees comparable to $150 on Ethereum. As a Layer 2 technology, reputable forces are behind its ongoing development, and the project has been funded by a16z and endorsed by Vitalik Buterin.
S: What motivated Clutch to include an NFT collection?
B: NFTs are a part of the active investor behaviors and supporting NFTs enriches the utility within our wallet, allows us to reward early customers (some will be airdropped), provide pfp (profile picture) identities for community recognition within the wallet and serve as a launch for our own metaverse.
S: What is the Clutch business model/community model?
B: Clutch’s business model is to charge a standard swap fee for each transaction. With added features, learn-and-earn communities and low blockchain fees we aim to provide significant value to our users.
Clutch’s community is being built on Facebook and Discord channels and through partnerships with women-focused crypto groups. The chat/community space within Clutch wallet will then become home to our community after launch — which enables Clutch to nurture a rich engagement experience amongst community members.
S: How can early adopters stay in touch with Clutch’s developments?
B: We’d love participation in our survey and enrollments in our beta list. The beauty of the project is how open the community is to learning together and supporting our vision of bringing more confident female investors into the crypto and DeFi ecosystems. Back to my earlier point, here is a Discord invite to a friendly and welcoming community of women learning crypto together for our mutual prosperity.
Website & Beta sign up: www.clutchwallet.xyz
Our questionnaire: https://rfjsjcnvelh.typeform.com/to/iYdn4Iov?typeform-source=clutchwallet.xyz
Discord: https://discord.gg/f9zuuqERTb