From Bitcoin Beginner to Trusted Ethereum Voice | Christine D. Kim | Women Powering Web3 Episode 01

Transcript

If you have soft skills to offer, I would say like don't undervalue those. Don't underredit those. I've seen more like female participation maybe on social media and X and LinkedIn for the crypto industry. Even back in 2018, I would say I've just constantly been surrounded by women that have just been killing it at their jobs. I've been so blessed, I think, from my entire time working in this industry to have been mentored by a lot of women. I've seen a lot more initiatives around encouraging participation from women in Ethereum development because of the Ethereum cat herders work and then also the shei organization.

>> One word that defines women in web 3, >> fearless. Hello and welcome back to EC Institute podcast. Ethereum thrives on credible neutrality and diversity is what makes neutrality meaningful in practice. This space is built on the foundation of a stronger technology, better governance and more inclusive ecosystem. Thus, we decided to bring those people to you so we can learn from each other's experience and support women joining in the ecosystem. In each episode, we will sit down with these inspiring women from

all across the blockchain ecosystem and talk about their working experience. Let's get started with women powering web 3. Today we are joined by Christine Kim. Christine is a popular name in Web3 media, Web3 journalism. Welcome Christine. >> Hi Puja. Thank you so much for having me. Christine, I know people love your posts and blogs and news that you write about Ethereum. We would want you to maybe kick off with a brief introduction saying what you do in the ecosystem.

Just let people know all about yourself. >> Yeah, for sure. So, some of you guys may know me because I used to be a tech reporter at Coindesk from 2018 to 2021. And that's when I really started to make a name for myself as somebody who creates content for um the Ethereum ecosystem. Other people might know me from my time at Galaxy. So I was also a research analyst at Galaxy from 2021 to 2025 and I was still also covering Ethereum during that time. And now recently I've gone off on my own. Um, I have my own Substack and my own podcast and I'm still continuing to cover Ethereum but

also now Bitcoin protocol development. >> I think I have known you for a very long time. When I joined Ethereum cat herders, I believe you were one of the first few journalists with whom I had the conversation. So I would love to hear from you what drew you into this web three space and particularly in Ethereum. So in the beginning, my sister was a very um early investor in Bitcoin and she was the one who told me about this new interesting uh technology. Um and at the time I was studying for an economics degree um for my undergrad and I was looking for a topic to research. So when

she told me about it, I wanted to dig a little bit deeper into the technology. Um, so my initial foray into crypto was through Bitcoin. Graduating from college, my first job was actually as a reporter at Coindesk. And the kind of stories that I would cover as a new reporter, I didn't get to choose. I didn't get to choose exactly what stories I did. And at the time, it was back in 2018, there was tons of activity happening on Ethereum. there were the this was during the time when the first couple decentralized finance applications were starting to to gain traction. This was um around the time of the uh initial coin offering boom. So there was lots of stories that I had to cover that was related to Ethereum. So

that's how I started to learn more about the Ethereum technology. And then over time, I think what really got me interested about Ethereum is just how much more use cases and how much more uh flexible the protocol was to allowing more innovation on top of kind of the building blocks that Bitcoin set. Bitcoin has these fundamentals of how to transfer money, how to transfer value permissionlessly across the world, across borders. But I think what really interested me is how Ethereum took that idea and was like, well, what if we made it general purpose? Like, what if we made easier to have more flexible spending conditions and allow for

different kinds of tokenized assets on chain? So, that's how I got into crypto and how I found myself even more interested in in Ethereum. So by this time you have become one of the most trusted voice in translating Ethereum protocols upgrades and you have also analyzed so many upgrades being part of Coindesk and then Galaxy and then on your own. I'm sure you have watched these upgrades very closely. Which particular upgrade you felt that it has brought a lot of changes personally that was your favorite?

>> I'm going to say two if that's okay. The first one is definitely the merge. I mean, by all accounts, the merge transition to proof of stake, it was such an historic upgrade, the one that I would say was technically the most challenging and had the most amount of anticipation building up to that upgrade because it was what, seven years in the making. However, I want to highlight a second upgrade that I think people underestimate just how much it changed the game for Ethereum governance, and that's the Pectra upgrade. So, the Pectra upgrade, for people that don't know, was an upgrade that developers were scoping out and eventually they had to split up the upgrade into two different upgrades because it was just

too large. And poster, I think there's just been so many changes in Ethereum governance because of the fallout of Perra. this whole idea around headliner selections and parallelizing different development initiatives that all kind of came out of the PCRA split, the great PCRA split. And uh I think that goes to show how certain um case studies or certain events in Ethereum's development really impact the governance culture of Ethereum. So I would say Perra is another major one that I still keep referencing back to when I'm explaining why Ethereum developers plan upgrades in a certain way. I'm like oh well you know

because so and so happened during Pekra and so hence they have this new process for planning upgrades. >> Yes. I mean historically Ethereum receives a lot of proposals right and it turns out like all of those proposals are equally good but implementing them all over 10 clients is a little bit challenging and timeconuming so it was a good idea to split it into two but I remember Metropolis like when Metropolis was also being uh constructed at that time also we landed up into the similar situation that we have to like kind of split it up and then we had two different upgrades for that that's one of the beauty of the Ethereum ecosystem that no matter what happens they come up with their new design, new governance

policy and we go ahead with the rough consensus that ultimately helps sustain our ecosystem. So that's so good to know that with this recent changes we are also following what was conceived at the inception of the Ethereum. >> Yeah, it's constantly evolving. >> Yeah, it's constantly evolving. Yeah, that's right. And then that is actually my next question. And like when we started this, we wanted that there should be more adoption of it. And uh when we look into it, we see that there are research going on on all sides of Ethereum. Not only just DeFi, not only just protocol, but more on the adoption, how we can increase adoption. In your opinion, uh has institutional understanding of Ethereum governance

improved? What do you think is the key piece that may have moved the needle in order to bring us where we are today? >> Yeah, that's a good question and very relevant I think to the narrative around Ethereum right now. I would say institutional adoption for Ethereum has definitely taken off. It's increased and and um you see major banks and major financial institutions all building experimenting products and services on top of Ethereum. I think what really moved the needle was a shift in the marketing and in the narrative for what Ethereum is built and designed to do. So the Ethereum Foundation and Etherealize have really been pushing this agenda

that Ethereum is for institutions that you can get customizability and you can get reliable uptime by building like layer 2 on top of Ethereum and that Ethereum is really a a platform and a protocol that people can build financial products on top of. And I think that is a narrative that can sometimes be at odds with this like cipher punk vision of Ethereum of Ethereum being a protocol that is credibly neutral that there is no intermediaries that you need to go through in order to transact on the chain. And while some of the narrative says like okay like financial

institutions they want decentralization too. I think that there's a bit of a misunderstanding that financial institutions care as much about decentralization as say like the individual like the freedom fighter that needs to use Ethereum as kind of like their last resort or like their only choice for access to like financial services and products. So I think the narrative around Ethereum shifting to be more Ethereum is for institutions. Ethereum is for traditional finance. I think that's really allowed more institutions to understand the technology better. But I think that at the same time it's also kind of weakened the other aspects of

what Ethereum is built for. And that's all seeped into the development culture of Ethereum. So like what kind of upgrades, what kind of features are being prioritized for like the Hagota or Glamsterdam forks. I think you can see that the features that are prioritizing scaling and prioritizing making Ethereum just more usable for institutions like those code changes being prioritized ahead of say code changes that just simply make Ethereum more secure and more resilient and credibly neutral.

That's a wonderful response and that's what we get when we talk to people like you who are very closely related to Ethereum and trying to cover every aspect of it. Thank you so much for that. Well, you have been in the space for over 5 years and you have been talking to people around protocol development. Many developers you have talked in in your podcast and in general collection of news. Did you notice any change in women's participation in Ethereum research since you started? Do you get a chance to talk to more women in the space? How is it like?

>> Yeah, definitely. I would say the work that Ethereum cat herders has been doing has been amazing. I've seen a lot more initiatives around encouraging participation from women in Ethereum development because of the Ethereum cat herders work. and then also the SheFi organization led by Maggie um Lake. I think I've seen a lot of kind of promotion around those programs and I've been so blessed I think from my entire time working in this industry to have been mentored by a lot of women. So for at Coindesk Lee Quen was a fellow senior reporter and she really worked with me on becoming a better reporter for the

crypto industry. Rachel Olirri was another incredible senior reporter at Coindesk that really helped me write. And then when I switched over to the research team at Coindesk, Noel Atinson really kind of took me under her wing, taught me the ropes of how to be a better analyst covering Ethereum. Um, and then when I moved over to Galaxy, like yes, I had a wonderful boss, like a male boss, um, Alex Thorne, but I also had incredible women, mentors, and just like colleagues, Kelly Greer, Amanda Fabiano, so many strong women that were already doing incredible at their roles.

Um, so yeah, I I would say that while I've seen more like female participation maybe on social media and X and LinkedIn for the crypto industry, even back in 2018, I would say I've just constantly been surrounded by women that have just been killing it at their at their jobs. >> That's wonderful. Like I wanted to hear this thing because you know people think that this is not a space for women. So it's good that you are sharing that you have been always surrounded by women and you got a lot of support. So we know that there are people who are there to support us. So this is not like a place where we should be scared of getting in.

Well my next question is the positioning. Do you think that if a woman has to position herself in the space saying that I am also working what role does visibility play? How can they share more about their work? >> I would say the main communities or like platforms that I'm trying to create more visibility around my work is X and then on LinkedIn. I'm constantly posting on these platforms because I feel like the institutions and maybe more non-cryptonative people that are just interested in learning more about Bitcoin and Ethereum, they're more on LinkedIn. whereas the cryptonative

community I feel like is more on X. So I'm trying to hit both kind of like spheres of influence by using these platforms. But I would say that if you are just getting started and you want to create more visibility around your work, utilize the social media platforms that you know best. So, I I was trained on how to post on X and LinkedIn, but maybe you're probably younger than me, maybe, and you know, like Instagram and Tik Tok and these other platforms really well. I would say like utilize that to your advantage and start posting about your work there. I think you'd be surprised at how much traction you can gain with your work um just by reaching out to and

making content that you're like the most naturally good at or like you're we're most used to creating posts about and yeah I would say start small and start building an audience kind of with your existing platforms and then you can start to venture out into new ones. So yeah, I would say like start small and grow from there. >> That's very good advice and I am waiting for some more advice to be coming in from your end. Let's move on to the next section. While we were working with WIP, I noticed that women were a little bit hesitant getting into this space. There are a lot of myths which are floating around. If you have to burst the myth,

what that would be? What do you think that women in cryptos or protocol research space are most scared of? They think that it is true, but they may not be true. I think for me, one myth that I'm constantly kind of pushing up against is that I need to have like a technical programming background. that I think has always been something that made me kind of wonder if what I'm doing is really beneficial, if I should keep going, if this is something that's even worthwhile for me to invest my time in.

I think if you're a non-technical person like me, it can feel as though there's nothing for you to offer in protocol development. There's nothing for you to do when it comes to understanding Bitcoin and Ethereum as a technology. But I think because I come from a nontechnical background, I can actually communicate what is happening on the technical level better than most developers. And so I feel like that's a myth where you might think as a person without a non-technical background or let's just say on the finance side, if you don't have like a strong understanding of like prediction markets and and DeFi markets, if you have a skill when it comes to communication and breaking down complex ideas in a way

that's easily understandable by a general audience who might not have the same expertise as these like very technical like developers, or like engineers. I think that's a skill that you can leverage. I don't know if the right dichotomy is like hard skills and soft skills, but if you have soft skills to offer, I would say like don't undervalue those. Don't underredit those. Um because it turns out that that's like a skill that you can hone to be just as important as someone with like hard skills of like programming or understanding how like the markets work.

So yeah, >> that's a pretty good one. Yes, we need people in every space like this technology can be complex for one person but if you understand a part of it you would make it understand to other people. So communication is also very important here and I believe if you have ideas of making um with u designs drawings then also you can help with communicating the idea right here. So that's a good one. Well, maybe in the interest of time, we can move into the next section which is kind of rapid fire round.

So, you may want to respond to all these questions with one word, one phrase or something that comes to your mind instantly. Would that be fine? >> Yeah, this is great because I usually do a rapid fire round with developers and so it's night or like it's interesting for me to the roles reverse and I'm on the hot seat now. >> All right, we'll try to keep it short. We'll keep it with five, but let's hear your heart. White paper or podcast? >> Podcast. >> One skill every Web3 woman should learn. >> Communication.

>> Online or in-person events? >> In person. >> One word for Ethereum governance. >> Complicated. >> One word that defines women in web 3. >> Fearless. >> Perfect. You nailed it. All right. Now it's chilling time. I know you are doing a lot of great work. You also mentioned about the uh newsletter that you do. So where can people find you? >> Yeah. So I'd say probably the the easiest way is to just type in protocolwatch.com.

That is the link for the crypto research and advisory firm that I've recently started up. And on that website, you'll be able to see um more information about my background. You'll be able to get all the links to my newsletter and podcast. It links directly to my Substack. It has all the links to the Ready for Merge podcast. But rather than saying all these different like links on on the show, I would just like highlight the Protocol Watch website um protocolwatch.com. >> Awesome. That's great. So, that's the time we have got today. Thank you so much Christine for joining us. Dear listeners, I hope you like today's episode. Please follow Christine on Twitter or X and subscribe to her

substack. Stay tuned for the next one as this season we will bring more stories of women shaping the future of web three. Cheers everyone.