While there is undoubtedly a lot of work to be done with regards to equal representation in terms of gender, race and sexuality within tech, it could be argued that most industries are making concerted efforts to address this. Unfortunately, crypto and blockchain projects appear to be an outlier in this regard, according to a new study by Forex Suggest.

The company’s analysis revealed a huge disparity between the number of male and female CEOs in the crypto and blockchain space, with 94% of CEOs in the study being male.

This large gender imbalance indicates that either women aren’t as interested in a career in the crypto sector, or that the sector seems impenetrable to many female workers. Having such a heavily weighted workforce in either direction could be detrimental as it represents a lack of cognitive diversity, where different perspectives and ways of thinking can be utilised to push a business forward.

Additionally, marketing and business decisions made by companies with heavily imbalanced demographics could not appeal to consumers who belong to other demographics and groups, and in this case, underrepresented groups.

Only half of the companies in the Forex Suggests study revealed their leadership teams on their websites. From these sites, they recorded a total of 259 leadership staff, 201 of which were male, with 58 female, meaning 77.61% of leadership positions are occupied by men while only 22.39% were occupied by women.

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This again clearly suggests that the blockchain and crypto sector is largely male-dominated, with fewer than a quarter of leadership positions being held by women. However, this split is not nearly as severe as the comparison of 50 CEOs in the pool of company’s analysed, which found that 47 were male and 3 were female.

Adoption is the largest barrier to crypto’s long-term success and with leadership teams that do not reflect a global user-base, there’s a strong case to be made that blockchain’s problems start at the top.