Exclusive interview with the pioneer of the Blwchin Marta Bilcher Law

On the eve of the International Women’s Day, we had a conversation with Marta Bilcher, a pioneer in the Blwchin Law. Marta Belcher is the lawyer for encrypted currencies and civil freedoms, the head of the Felicoin Foundation as well as her non -profit sister, Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web. She is also a general advisor and head of politics in protocol laboratories, and also works on the Creative Public Board of Directors and Chairman of the Blockchain Association. She was a pioneer in encryption policy, including certificate in the US Congress and other legislative bodies around the world.

Crypto.News: Marta, please correct me if you are wrong, the first project under your leadership that turned into their heads was not worried now, an organization that helps teenagers with life -threatening diseases. For me, this looks completely different from the Blockchain industry. However, was this experience a permanent impact on what you are doing now?

Marta Bilcher: Wow, this is a deep cut! Yes, while I was in the college, I managed a non -profit national institution that helped teenagers in life -threatening diseases, by hosting events and programs for them and also by calling for politics. By working with these teenagers, I learned that many of their diseases (such as leukemia, for example) can already be treated with bone marrow transplants. But many of them died because they could not find the bone marrow match. I also learned that the blood of the umbilical cord – the blood left in the umbilical cord after the birth of a child – can be used instead of the bone marrow for these transplants. But it turns out that the blood of umbilical cord is always thrown as medical waste rather than maintaining their use in transplants. It is completely crazy when you think about it.

Therefore, in the college, it has become a defender of the banking blood services that can be preserved and used to save lives instead of throwing it. In addition to carrying out politics by not worrying now, I did a political work for the National donors program (calling for the financing of the National Blood Blood Bank) and worked as a member of the California Parliament that has successfully created a draft law to establish a secret cord banking system in California.

That was my first invasion in the world of technology policy. And I think for many people, technology policy looks completely abstract – like, it is difficult to imagine the effect it will be. But I was also working with adolescents whose lives were saved through these transplants, so they really enhance in my mind the real influence that technology policy can make. After those experiments, it was an easy decision to follow the technology and politics law as a profession.

CN: How did you get to know Bitcoin or Blockchain? To what extent did you realize that Blockchain is important for you? Have you become interested in the technology law before or after it became interested in Blockchain?

MB: My career has started as a technology lawyer interested in protecting civil freedoms and public interest. I was initially a lawyer for a law firm, and I had the honor to represent public interest organizations such as Frontier Electronic (EFF), the Democracy and Technology Center, and the GUTENBERG project, as well as large companies.

My first invasion of Blockchain in 2015 was, which helped some early Blockchain companies think about how to protect the industry from patents, based on a paper I wrote to EF called “penetration of the patent system”. I was immediately attracted to this technology because I saw its ability to protect privacy and import the benefits of civil freedoms for criticism in the Internet world. So I was a drug addict and started focusing on Blockchain.

I had great customers and worked to work on interesting things-such as writing the first-transformable software license from Blockchain, defending the first litigation in patents that were presented against Blockchain, and writing the first Amicus Blockchain Association. I also spent a lot of time in those early years talking to Blockchain policymakers (I often can explain technology for them for the first time!)

After that, I started working with Protocol Labs (PL) during the early years of Filecoin, initially represented as an external advisor, then she became an external general adviser to PL, then left my law firm to join as a full -time general consultant. I was very excited to see Filecoin – to use Blockchain technology to build an alternative to large technology that controls their own data. It was a great opportunity to be part of building this technology, which I think is an institution for the next generation of the web.

CN: You occupy a lot of roles – from the president of the Filecoin Foundation to the General Adviser for the Protocol Laboratory to the Creative Commonas member and chairman of the Blockchain Association. I want to ask two questions about this.

First, how do you manage your time to work with many organizations?

MB: We will likely regret this loudly, but I have a strategy “integration of work and life” instead of “a balance between work and life” (which works for me but certainly will not work for everyone, so I do not defend others to adopt it!) For me, at this moment at the right time, I like this through this task of using technology to protect civil freedoms, and many people are surrounded by working to work in the matter, They are

CN: The second question is, what makes the institution of value and attractive to you so that you are ready to join it? What is the common topic of projects that you are working on?

MB: All the work I do through these organizations is linked to this broader task of using technology to protect civil freedoms. Therefore, although I have multiple hats, I feel that everything I do is actually just one job.

CN: You won the Women’s Entrepreneur Award for your pioneering role in Blockchain Law. There are conflicting data about the gender -based wage gap in Web3. Pantera Capital reports that there is a “reverse” gap, which means that women are better than men. Others say that women receive much lower salaries than men. More than that, we don’t see many companies led by women in Web3. What are your notes about sex imbalance, and what are the reasons behind it? What are the challenges and the benefits of being a woman in encryption?

MB: Frankly, there are many amazing women with encryption leaders at the present time. As one example, all the main encryption groups had women as founding executives. I am somewhat surprised when people talk about the encryption is dominated by males because this is not my personal experience to be in the encryption space. If I ask me to think about the leaders of Crypto, people who jump to me are mostly women. But I realize this is personal!

CN: I have noticed that the Filecoin Foundation team is mostly women. Do you think that companies that have a majority of a woman differ from male dominant companies in the way they behave?

MB: This is true – Filecoin’s leadership team is more than half of women, our employees are about half of women, and our council is almost all women. But this was not intended – we only searched for the best talent, and this is what we found. As I said before, there are many amazing women in encryption!