Binance has launched a perfume to “convince” women to get into cryptocurrencies. The initiative, which could make you smile, nevertheless raises many questions from a marketing point of view, but also from a feminist point of view.
Money doesn’t have a smell, but cryptocurrencies now do. Binance, the world’s largest digital asset exchange, announced on X on March 5, 2024 that she was going to release a perfume — a “ binance water ”, to use the term used. This is not a joke, but the company’s latest marketing initiative, and it is particularly aimed at women.
In another messagepublished the next day, Binance explains that it “ There are still not enough women in crypto », an observation that the company makes on the occasion of International Women’s Day, which takes place every year on March 8. In order to remedy this, Binance has decided to “ launch “CRYPTO”, a new fragrance that will serve to start conversations with the public about what needs to be done to close the gap between men and women “. Although the 100 bottles of perfume produced by Binance are not for sale, the initiative is divisive, even if it is symbolic.
A roundabout way to find new customers
In a video, published on After smelling the perfume, several women must answer questions asked by the Binance team about crypto. Result: a large number of them have not yet “ started their crypto journey “.
Among the reasons given, many say that it is out of fear, or because they believe that it is ” not as simple as with banks “. Fortunately, Binance is here to save them: the platform offers courses to learn about crypto. Even better: the first 5,000 women to take a short introductory course and take a quiz will receive $25 in cryptocurrency — provided they create an account on Binance.
The initiative was not necessarily received with enthusiasm. Online, many users mocked the idea, speculating about what the perfume smelled like. But the idea has above all been criticized and seen as counterproductive: it is bad form to fight against the exclusion of women by using hackneyed clichés about femininity, and the supposed attraction of women to perfume.
The location of the stand also leaves something to be desired. By setting up in a hyper-luxurious shopping center in Bahrain, a petromonarchy criticized for its discrimination against women, Binance’s message comes across even less well. In fact, most of the women interviewed are white and wealthy — far from the message of banking inclusion for disadvantaged populations put forward by cryptocurrency fans.
Finally, the fact of having to create a Binance account to follow the course and earn the promised 25 dollars brings to mind another controversy. In December 2023, the Financial Times revealed that a “ charitable initiative » conducted by Binance in France and sponsored by the government would have in fact been misused. The platform would have taken advantage of courses, delivered to unemployed people, to convince them to create a Binance account.
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