Black investors say crypto is still key to building wealth even as digital assets see steep sell-off in 2022
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Some minority investors say crypto is still an important investment even after this year's big crash.
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According to a survey, 25% of Black investors own cryptocurrency compared to 15% of white investors.
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Experts have expressed concern around minority investors' exposure to risks in the crypto market.
In 2013, as crypto was creeping into the mainstream, Cleve Mesidor was working as an appointee in the Obama administration's Department of Commerce. As a favor to a friend, Mesidor helped pen a press release about bitcoin. Though fairly uninterested and unimpressed at the time, in just a few years Mesidor would find herself steeped in the world of crypto, quitting her job to become a full time representative of the industry and a committed investor.
The awakening to the world of crypto came a few years after Mesidor helped with her friend's press release, when she watched "Dope", a movie about a group of Black teenagers who use bitcoin to thwart a financial criminal. The film, she said, sparked a vision in her mind of crypto as a path to racial equity, a tool for people who had been either accidentally or deliberately left out of the traditional financial system.
That kind of awakening is a common experience for minority investors who say they're bullish on crypto — and who continue to hold even as the market suffers through a steep sell-off this year.
The losses, they say, are inconsequential to the overall objective of the project, with tokens like bitcoin and ethereum providing a sense of freedom, and the potential to level the playing field with those who have never experienced discrimination from lenders or bankers.
Jacob Faber, an NYU professor and an expert in social inequality, told Insider that the perspective of people like Mesidor was likely a result of a long history of discrimination in the financial system, with well documented evidence of bias in everything from opening bank accounts to getting a mortgage to getting a loan to start a business.
A survey by Ariel Investments and Charles Schwab released in April showed 28% of Black Americans say they distrust banks, compared to just 18% of White Americans. 56% also reported not feeling respected by financial institutions — something Mesidor can relate to. She recalled experiences of her and her family having loan applications denied or being treated poorly by bank employees.
"I wasn't even taken seriously. You know, when somebody is just like, 'why are you wasting my time?'" Mesidor said. "Get a degree. We did that. Get a good paying job with benefits, did that. And still it's not enough."