Crypto Gals By William Lama, Ph.D.
I’d like to close out this series on cryptocurrency with a look at the people involved, especially the female people. New research has identified the characteristics of those in the crypto space. Market Research Reports – Bitpanda
The typical crypto-people tend to be interested in business and technology, have higher disposable incomes and are open to risk taking. The archetypical cryptocurrency holder is a young, highly educated male. Women comprise just 20% of the crypto investors, while they are nearly 50% of common stock holders.
Most of the women involved with crypto are on the business side. Kelly Loeffler is a businesswoman and former CEO of the cryptocurrency trading platform Bakkt, before becoming United States Senator for Georgia.
Crypto Female 50 | The Top 50 Most Influential Women in Crypto | CryptoWeekly
Kelly Loeffler
The crypto techies also tend to be men, but women are getting into the act. Amiti Uttarwar is the face of “The New American Dream.” The daughter of Indian immigrants, Amiti is the first woman developer of Bitcoin Core, the software changing the face of privacy, security and value. First Confirmed Female Bitcoin Core Developer Is True Face of The New American Dream (forbes.com)
Amiti Uttarwar, Bitcoin Core developer
The nerdiest of the crypto techies are the cryptographers who write or solve complex security codes. The top modern cryptographers according to Wikipedia are nearly all males. Out of 60 or so listed there were only two women.
The dearth of women in cryptography wasn’t always the case. In fact, women made important contributions to cryptography as far back as the 18th century.
Sophie Germain was born to a wealthy French family in 1776 and at a young age became enthralled with math. Defying her parents’ initial disapproval, she studied night after night, borrowing lecture notes from friends and submitting answers to problem sets under the alias ‘Monsieur LeBlanc’. Sophie’s efforts caught the attention of some of the most prominent mathematicians of the day including Joseph Lagrange and Carl Gauss who became her mentors.
Sophie Germain, a mathematical novel by Dora Musielak
Sophie’s contribution to cryptography involved the “prime numbers” – whole numbers that can be evenly divided only by 1 and the number itself. The first several primes are 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 17, 19, 23. Sophie Germain was able to prove a special case of “Fermat’s Last Theorem” for any prime P for which (2P + 1) is also a prime. [1904.03553] Germain and Her Fearless Attempt to Prove Fermat's Last Theorem (arxiv.org) These special prime numbers, now called Sophie Germain primes, are 2, 3, 5, 11, 23, 29. Note that 17 is a prime, but not a Sophie Germaine prime, because 2x17 + 1 = 35 is not a prime, as it is factorable into 5x7. The numbers (2P + 1) associated with Sophie Germain primes are called “safe primes.” (eg. 5, 7, 11, 23, 47, 59). Safe prime numbers are used in cryptography since very large ones are extremely hard to factor. For example, given the number 1,095,037 it would take a long time to find its factors 719 and 1523. Primes are used in the famous SHA256 hashing algorithm.
Fast forward to the 20th century. During the Second World War women were essential to the war effort in many ways, including as code breakers. According to the New York Times, “Not all superheroes wear capes, and Elizebeth Smith Friedman should be the subject of a future Wonder Woman movie.”
Jason Fagone chronicled the life of this extraordinary woman in “The Woman Who Smashed Codes.” As World War II raged, Elizebeth fought a highly classified battle of wits against Hitler’s Reich, cracking multiple versions of the Enigma machine used by German spies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizebeth_Smith_Friedman
Female codebreakers at Bletchley Park, The Guardian
Back to the future. Research has shown that code written by women is as good or better than that written by men. GitHub is a giant repository of code used by over 12 million people. Software developers on GitHub can collaborate on projects. When a developer writes code for someone else’s project, it’s called a “pull request.” The project leader can then decide whether to accept the code. The researchers looked at approximately 3 million pull requests and found that code written by women was approved at a higher rate (78.6%) than code written by men (74.6%).
Based on my years managing software development at Xerox, I am not surprised by this finding. I believe that when young women realize that they can become really good software developers, the Crypto Gals era may return.
I’ll close out this essay with a brief look at the two women who made the list of the top 60 modern cryptographers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cryptographers
Shafrira Goldwasser
Shafrira Goldwasser is an Israeli-American computer scientist and winner of the Turing Award in 2012. She is Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT and co-founder and chief scientist of Duality Technologies. Duality Technologies - Secure Data Collaboration Products
Wang Xiaoyun
Wang Xiaoyun is a Chinese cryptographer, mathematician, and computer scientist. She is a professor of Mathematics and System Science of Shandong University and winner of The Levchin Prize for Real-World Cryptography (iacr.org). She is one of the world's most formidable code breakers. Over the past few years, Wang has exposed vulnerabilities in some of the most secure digital signature systems.
Dr. William Lama has a PhD in physics from the University of Rochester. Taught physics in college and worked at Xerox as a principle scientist and engineering manager. Upon retiring, joined the PVIC docents; served on the board of the RPV Council of Home Owners Associations; served as a PV Library trustee for eight years; served on the PV school district Measure M oversight committee; was president of the Malaga Cove Homeowner's Association. Writes about science, technology and politics, mostly for his friends.
email: wlama2605@gmail.com
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