Margaux Avedisian – Bitcoin’s Home Grown Comedian
One sign that bitcoin is maturing as an industry is that it now has its own comedian.
Margaux Avedisian, a bitcoin investor and entrepreneur, is also a comedian who does comic routines about bitcoin, according to The Wall Street Journal . She performed her unique bitcoin comedy at the Consensus 2017 and other conferences.
Mixing Comedy And Bitcoin
She recently joked during a bitcoin conference that the current U.S. President makes Gary Johnson, the Libertarian presidential candidate in 2016, look like “not a bad idea,” but like Bitcoin Unlimited, it “isn’t going to happen.”
Not everyone in the bitcoin savvy audience was receptive to the joke about Bitcoin Unlimited, given that many of them view Bitcoin Unlimited as a way to address the slow transaction times that is plaguing bitcoin.
But Avedisian has found that bitcoiners, besides often a bit nerdy, are open to self mockery. Hence, her comedy continues.
Avedisian’s affinity for comedy and bitcoin both came naturally to her and by accident. Hence, she seems to excel at both.
For the 33-year-old Avedisian, comedy and bitcoin are intertwined. She became active with bitcoin and comedy alike in 2012. She signed up for an open mic night at a club and found she had a talent for comedy. She came across bitcoin when she met the founder of Tradehill, a now defunct bitcoin exchange, at a party. Tradehill was looking for a business development manager.
Trained as an emergency medical technician and having studied chemistry and psychology at Mount Holyoke College, Avedisian had already worked at startups in San Francisco when she got the chance to work for Tradehill. She had also co-founded a video-based information service called Answer in 30.
Bitcoin struck her as something that could disrupt finance and have a big impact on the world. She also liked bitcoin’s Wild West quality.
A Bitcoin Entrepreneur
After Tradehill folded that same year, Avedisian co-founded and became CEO of AlphaPoint Exchange, a company specializing in digital currency networks. She left after three months and co-founded MonetaGo Inc., which assists financial companies with blockchain issues.
She began appearing weekly in a comedy show at the Bitcoin Center in New York City that lasted for two years.
Jesse Chenard, CEO of MonetaGo, said the best comedy is that which you live, and Avedisian lives bitcoin.
Michael Terpin, CEO of Transform Group, a public relations firm focusing on new technologies where Avedisian currently serves as vice president, described Avedisian as Zelig, a Woody Allen character who appeared at every pivotal moment of the Jazz Age.
She doesn’t only joke about bitcoin. She does routines about San Francisco and Florida, about being a woman in the tech industry and about her dating app experiences.
Also read: Buttcoin: Using comedy gold as rehab for ex-bitcoiners
Bitcoin Audiences Unique
Performing before bitcoin audiences has its challenges, Chenard said. The audience is largely composed of nerds and they are often highly cliquish. But the audiences are also open to being made fun of. Chenard suspects this is because they’re used to it.
Both comedy and tragedy can be derived from the fact that bitcoin is created out of nothing. People need to have a thick skin if they’ve spent $10,000 for something that is now worth $2 million.
During Avedisian’s Consensus performance, she got a laugh about being in a car with Andreas Antonopoulos, asking why they weren’t in a nicer car, given the number of digital currency conferences he holds.
She recently quipped that she was honored to be on stage among bitcoiners since it could be the last show some of them see before being jailed.
Featured image from Shutterstock.
