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A
Welcome back to the Bitcoin Treasuries podcast. I'm Tim Kotsman. I'm here with Emily Dempsey. Emily, thanks for being here in New York in the studio where you're not supposed to be because you're based in Miami.
B
Thank you for having me. I'm super excited to be here.
A
Can you teach us about social media? We were just talking about carousels and stills, and I live in a Twitter world. A little bit of YouTube. But, you know, 12 hours a day on Twitter will do something to you. But you're more based in Instagram. Is that a fair characterization? Can you walk us through, like, what. What that even means?
B
Yeah. So I. To give you a little bit of backstory on me. So I've been in some capacity active on social media for at least 10, 15 years. I. Wow.
A
Like Gary Vee, sort of OG here. So when I. I mean, but really.
B
But yes, but I like, I never. I didn't ever really fully take it seriously as like, my main. My main job or, like, main source of income. So I. To go backwards in time. My first job out of college and then all the way up through the pandemic, I was a buyer for some of the big department stores here in New York City. Dream job from the time I was probably 11 years old. And I figured out you could get paid to go shopping for a living.
A
That sounds pretty cool.
B
Every girl's dream. And social media was kind of like really coming up and becoming just the hot new thing, but it wasn't really a business yet. And I figured out, you know, I'm working in fashion. I'm hardly making any money. We're working investment banking hours. And, like, we wanted to do all these workout classes and get some free blowouts and spray tans and figured out that if we started posting and I had a girl I started this account with at the time, it was called Detox to Retox. And the idea.
A
What does retox mean?
B
So Detox.
A
I know what Detox is. I don't know what Retox is.
B
Okay. Retox was like, we would go to our Hampton Shear Houses and have a fun weekend with our friends, but we still wanted to, like, look and feel our best.
A
So Retox is when you're going out to party.
B
Yeah.
A
Okay.
B
This is like a great project in my 20s.
A
Okay, got it.
B
So we'd post, like, a bunch of, like, workout videos, like skinny girl recipes, healthy, you know, high protein meals. And then we would come up with, you know, strategies for how to like, see, still look good and, like, go out and be able to have fun with your friends. So we had, like, our skinny girl Margarita recipe. We had, you know, you had to drink a glass of water between every alcoholic cocktail, and then that's just good advice. But this, it was, like, not advice at the time, and nobody was really talking about it. So I started this account with another girl that I had met during Art Basel one year, actually. I think we met in the Hamptons one summer. And then Art Basel. We were in Art Basel together. And we're like, we're gonna. We're finally starting the fitness Instagram account, but ours is gonna be different than everybody else's. We're gonna, like, talk about real stuff and give real advice. So, anyway, so I had. We had set up this account. We ended up eventually parting ways, like, a year, maybe not even a year later. And I wanted to keep doing it. I love doing the fitness stuff. We started getting a bunch of, like, free workout classes, free blowouts and spray tans, and, like, it was kind of subsidizing my fashion girl dreams in New York City. And eventually I figured out how to get it to make a little bit of money. And then the pandemic happened, and I realized I did not want that to be my personal brand for the rest of my life. So I kind of sunset that era. But it taught me a lot about social media. So that platform we were really active on was Instagram. Then Tick Tock came out in, like, 2019, I think.
A
Quick question about before we move away from the OG Instagram account. Was this something that you two had, like, for like a. More of a business audience, like a contract for or you. It was like just your account or just her account or your shared account?
B
So we. It was a shared Instagram account. We both had the password. We never set up any, like, formal agreement or anything. It was just kind of understood it was going to be ours. 50 50. And when we did. Did the. The Instagram account together, we. We were never making any money, but we would always, like, agree on content we were posting. We would agree on, like, who we were gonna partner with. And this was all just like, on a barter basis.
A
And who gets the free blowout?
B
Who gets the free blowout? Who. You know, who's. And we would try to post every day, and we would alternate the content. You know, I'm doing the workout series this week. You're doing the healthy meal thing. And then she ended up getting a boyfriend, and the boyfriend kind of got in her Ear. And he was like, you're the real star of the show. Like, you need to separate. So she ended up. We ended up, like, going to dinner, going to wine in, like, Greenwich Village somewhere. And we sit down, we're like, this really isn't working anymore. Like, she's like, I want to do my own thing. You keep the handle, you keep the account. I'm going to do something else. And so that really actually ended our friendship. It was kind of sad, but we just. That was from a business standpoint. We did not set up an llc. We didn't trademark the name. We didn't really do any of those things. It was just kind of. We got excited. We were young. We wanted to see what would happen. And then down the road, I did end up setting it up as an llc. But I waited, and this is not advice I would give to somebody today. I would actually do it in a totally different order. And that's how I've set my businesses up today. But I waited until I had my first brand deal to then rush and set up an LLC and open up the business bank account. And I remember, like, there's actually a picture of me at Chase in World Trade Center. There's a Chase in the World Trade Center. That's where my office was. And I had snuck away from my job at Saks to go set up my business bank account. I was so excited. My first LLC for my first business endeavor and foray into entrepreneurship. And then never. I don't think I actually ever filed for a trademark for that business. Which that's a good thing because it's a little expensive to file for a trademark. But, yeah, that's kind of the story there. And I wish that I had actually spoken to a lawyer before I set a real lawyer. Like, when I hired. I had talked to my friends that were lawyers, and they recommended I set up a Delaware llc, which I, you know, not advice. You guys do your own research. But I, going back in time, I would never set up right now for me a Delaware llc. I like other states. I'm in Florida now, so Florida, Wyoming, just. It's a little less expensive.
A
I had Wyoming on my mind.
B
Yeah, it's a little less expensive. Delaware is really expensive if you're not a corporation making like millions and millions of dollars a year to just maintain. And other states are a less expensive.
A
Before I rudely interrupted you, you were saying, and then something about TikTok.
B
So 2019 is when TikTok, like, really came out in the US and I, the Time I was like goofing around on it. I was on a trip with my mom in Turkey and I'm like, just messing around with TikTok. And I was posting the dumbest videos, literally walking down the street in Turkey, me waving. And the. The post would get like 20,000 views. Another post. If you've ever been to Turkey, the Turkish ice cream trucks play a game with you.
A
Okay?
B
Do you know what I'm talking about? So they have these different flavors of ice cream, they wear a funny hat and they will go to get you your scoop of ice cream and they pull it out, they go to give it to you, they tease you and they play a game. You can have it, you can't have it. And then all of a sudden, next thing you know, he goes to get you your scoop. He's like, all right, this is it. They take the entire thing of ice cream out that's like this big, and they go to give it to you. So I post a video of my mom filmed me going through all this. I'd never seen it before. And it goes on TikTok. It got like a million views overnight. So it's this. I'm saying all of this to say, like, you never know what the next big social media platform is like. Had I continued posting consistently on that platform, I probably could be like, like some TikTok personality right now. Pandemic ends up happening and I decided I didn't really want all of my personal life all over the Internet. I didn't want to be sharing these kinds of moments and every ice cream
A
vacation experience for the rest of your life.
B
I think it's good to have some level of privacy with your personal life, especially if you're putting a lot out there on social media. So anyway, so this, and this was all under the detox account. So pandemic happens. I eventually kind of sunset all of those and moved to Miami and at the time was working in commercial real estate.
A
And
B
it was a very exciting time to be in commercial real estate. Coming out of the pandemic, interest rates were super low. All these businesses were looking to move to Miami, relocate, open new locations. I was doing retail leasing at the time, so it was very exciting. But I find myself, I was working for a brokerage based in New York City, living in Miami. So I'm working remotely in a new city and I find myself really struggling to make friends and connect with other like minded people. New York. I had access to like friends in every single industry. Really smart friends, really fun friends, really fit Friends. Like I had a friend for every single thing I could ever want to do. I could get on the subway, I could walk to them. It was just, there's so much access here. I didn't have that in Miami. So I started a Facebook group called Brickell Babe Bible. That was the name of it at the time, like Brickell Babe Guide. And I wanted manicure recommendations, I wanted to find a housekeeper. I wanted to know like, which restaurants actually had good sushi, not just all of these like fake Google reviews. And there wasn't really anything like that. So the community ends up blowing up in the first year just really quickly. And I had girls wanting to host events and just bring people together. There was such a rush for community and connection coming out of the pandemic. So we were definitely a little bit in the right place at the right time. But also there wasn't really anybody like saying, oh, hey, I'm a transplant. I came from New York. I have a certain, I have certain expectations when it comes to quality of service. I don't like being told my manicure is $100 and then I go to pay the bill, it's $250. Like you're just. It's not. Miami's not a very efficient marketplace in the way that New York is. And there's so much competition and people are trying to do the best job that they can and the pricing just kind of shakes out in an efficient way. Miami was such a new city and there was so much such an influx of people coming out of the pandemic. It was just chaos. And so that was always like the ethos of that community. Today it's 70,000 women across all of our platforms. We're active on Instagram, TikTok. We have three Facebook groups, we have email, we send out two email newsletters a week. I'm sure I'm forgetting some other platforms.
A
Which one would you say is the biggest or primary platform if you had to choose?
B
Facebook group is really active because it's community generated content. So similar to, for bitcoin people. It's similar to how everybody talks to each other on Twitter, but it's private and gated so men can't come in.
A
Got it.
B
And you can post anonymously.
A
You've had men try to come in.
B
We definitely have men try to come in and the girls actually will. They'll like find my Facebook profile and send me a message and send me the links to the profiles of the men that got in and they get really upset. Like, please remove this person because they're talking about dating. Maybe somebody was getting a divorce. Maybe somebody's, you know, struggling with their relationship with their mother in law. So they're talking about all kinds of stuff in there. And you can toggle between having a public account so people know who you are. You can also go into private mode. So it's almost like Reddit mixed with Facebook, but it's in a private closed community.
A
That makes a lot of sense. I was gonna guess Instagram, but that makes a lot of sense.
B
And that's where they talk to each other. So it's really community driven. The Instagram is like our website almost because we're putting out editorial content, we're putting out recaps of just in person events and then we have ambassadors posting their content that they'll collaborate with us. So it's more kind of like it's like our marketing platform. And now they do talk to each other on the comments, but it's not as community driven, I would say.
A
How did you think through and develop the business side of what you're doing there without it feeling like not great
B
because I feeling transactional. Yeah.
A
Or like, oh, she's sold out now she has a sponsor. Whatever people would say or think or even just like vibes, if that makes any sense.
B
No, 100% it does. It's. This is actually a question I get asked, asked a lot and it's something I put a lot of thought into when we, when we first started the community. So this go around with this business was a totally different approach. So I knew I had previously built and monetized a social media community or social media brand. This. I wanted the community to lead first. I didn't want it to be me. So I knew I don't want to be like the face of this. I want it to lead with the group. And I knew at some point it would be become a business. So we had a media kit I made for us probably within the first 30 or 60 days. I just took my old media kit, put on our new logo, kind of rearranged everything and just put in the statistics about the community. Even though we were only a couple thousand people at the time, I wanted to be able to share that with different venues. I knew I was going to get offered a lot of free stuff. I honestly, I was excited to get some free services. I had just done a career change like, okay, like we can, you know, that's great. But I also knew I needed to set it up as an LLC asap. So we Set up the llc, we had a media kit and then that media kit actually allowed us to start to do a lot of different barter partnerships with local businesses around Miami. So we started to host happy hours and workout classes and all these different businesses were inviting us to come in and giving us free happy hours, free pizza making class, free workouts if we just brought our community members because for them it was a grassroots marketing initiative. So we did that for free for about a year. We eventually started selling tickets because our expenses started growing and then we started doing a little bit of partnerships. But to be honest, community is really complicated. There's so many moving parts. I didn't ever want to take on a partnership that I didn't like fully stand behind and that wasn't a long term partnership because it is so much work to execute on. I didn't want to do a bunch of small one off deals. So we waited a really long time until we were able to get to a place where we could support, you know, 3 month, 6 month, 12 month long partnerships that were bigger check sizes and were with brands that we'd been building relationships with for two, three years. So in summary, I would say if you are looking to get into the media business in any capacity, whether it's in financial services, bitcoin, fitness, any industry, you want to have a media kit from day one, you can find that easily on, on Canva or just Google. Google IT Cloud is a great resource to help you set that up as well. That's something that you're going to want to share with people. If you're having a show, you want people to come on your show, they're going to want to see your media kit. You want sponsors, they're going to want to see your media kit. You want to host events and do like barter anything, they're going to want to see your media kit and then set up an llc, talk to an attorney to figure out which state makes sense and structure makes sense for you. And then trademark. The trademark process can take a very long time and it is, you know, you're building a brand, you want to protect your IP and what you're creating. Getting the trademark filed earlier than later is always a good idea.
A
What would you tell someone who's really passionate about a certain subject and is open to whether it's long form content or obviously probably video content. What would you tell them, including expectations? For example, there's one person that in the bitcoin space said, hey, it took me two or three years to really just Grind out to where they are now with a couple hundred thousand followers on social media, and now they're making more money just doing that than they used to in a full time job. Does that pencil in your mind or what expectations would you give people?
B
Yeah, I mean, I would say that consistency is the number one most important thing when it comes to social media media. And you have to be you. First of all, you have to love it. You have to like actually enjoy doing this. For me, I love interviewing people. I love bringing community together. I love the, you know, for my show on the educational side of finance or bitcoin or digital assets or whatever we want to call it, I get so excited about that process. I love it. I don't even need to make money to do it. I think it's fun interviewing people, editing. I love it. If you don't love it, you're gonna burn out and you should find something else. But you might need to try it for a couple of months to figure that out. And then I would say that, you know, it takes a long time and the most important thing you can do is to be consistent and just keep going. But it's probably going to take 12 to 24 months before you actually start seeing that, that J curve where the income starts popping off. But you have to build a track record. So for short format, long format, all of this stuff is getting SEO optimized. And now A A or geo aeo, it's different depending on who you ask. But generative engine optimized, which is the AI terminology. So all this content is getting optimized on these different platforms. So it's, you have to plant all these little seeds and then they eventually start to grow. But if you've ever done SEO for a website, it doesn't happen overnight. It takes months. And then it takes other people retweeting your content or resharing your content or linking to it on their blog post or their newsletter. And then all of a sudden all these little seeds have planted and it's almost like bamboo shoots. They just shoot up overnight.
A
How did you, in the beginning form relationships, reach out to people for guests, for the podcast now podcast and any
B
other part of the good story.
A
Oh, perfect.
B
I love these questions because no one's ever asked me about this side of my, my business. It's been, you know, for me to date, this story has really been focused on the community. So the bitcoin journey is, it's a fun one. So I.
A
And however you want to go about it, because you have Two podcasts.
B
So I have two podcasts.
A
Explain that however you want to attack it. There's a lot going on here, I think.
B
Yeah, I have two shows right now. Okay. So we covered my women's community.
A
We still have to do the foray into mining. We can do that.
B
We do well. So this is going to tie that all together. So I'm. I have my women's community. It's helping me make friends. It's helping me get my manicure recommendations, workout classes, getting some free stuff. At the time, I'm thinking I can convert these relationships into leads for my retail leasing business. The gym is going to want to open a second location. I have this great relationship with them. I understand their customer. Why wouldn't they use me as the broker to, you know, go from Coral Gables to Brickell or South Beach? That's what I was thinking at the time. What's on. What ends up happening in south Florida is there was such a boom. All of the spaces filled up literally overnight. So I found myself working on all these projects where I wasn't going to get paid for three years at the earliest. And the way retail leasing works is you get paid half the commission when the lease is signed and the second half of the commission when the tenant moves into the space. We were doing deals on spaces that wouldn't be vacant for three years if the existing tenant decided to leave. So I started realizing I can't, number one, I need to make money between now and the next three years. And also, these tenants might not leave. This is like, no job security. So I had been talking to my dad. My dad actually got involved in the bitcoin space, just kind of as a enthusiast pretty early on. So I had been hearing about it from him for a long time. This is back in, like, 2013, like, Mt Gox era. So he would. He was always in my ear about it and my brothers as well. But it wasn't until this Instagram account gets hacked in. I think it was 2018, the one we'd been talking about. Detox, Detox. And the hacker, it got hacked, it got stolen. And the hacker writes me. He says, you need to send me $500 worth of Bitcoin and I will give you the account back. Well, me being like, oh, my God, I just monetized this thing. Like, I need to get the account back. I immediately set up a coinbase account. I send $500 to Coinbase, I convert it into bitcoin, and I send it to this address. I have no idea where it's going. I have no idea if I'm getting the account back, but I was like desperate to get the account back. And that was. It was 2018. There goes my bitcoin. My first bitcoin transaction. I got the account back and then I didn't ever go back in Coinbase for maybe four years, three years after that. So that was my very first bitcoin
A
transaction was to an unknown hacker.
B
And the only time I've ever sold bitcoin. Yes.
A
Wow.
B
So, okay, so anyway, so that. Now you're getting some of my bitcoin story in here. So, all right, so my retail leasing career, I'm like, oh my God, I'm not going to be doing any deals. What am I, what am I going to do? I ended up switching to a different team that was doing self storage and they were doing a lot more transactions. They were practicing across the country. So I didn't have the, like the, the geography risk that I had. Just in South Florida, we had a lot more territory and it was more of a niche asset class. Kind of during this time, I'm talking to my dad, I'm like, I don't know what I'm doing, if I'm doing the right thing. And he had been mining in a very, you know, a small capacity hosting with a group. And I started looking at the numbers and I'm like, what is he doing? Like, I don't even understand what is mining. There's no shovel. Like, what is. Like, what is this? So I go to the bitcoin conference and I just kind of started trying to learn a little bit more, but it was very, very intimidating. And so then I put it back away and I didn't think about it again. And then about a year, two years later, I came back to him and I'm like, hey, I think I want to like, try to learn more about bitcoin. So we decided, what if there's a way to connect real estate? I'd been looking at self storage properties, their income. They're basically a small business attached to real estate. Why can't we treat a bitcoin mining operation like a small business attached to real estate and couple the two together? So I went around and while I was still doing my other job and looked at probably 50 different Bitcoin mining sites. I had to go like very deep on understanding the, the economics, the energy consumption. How does energy work? What is on grid, what is off grid, what is air cot, what is, you know, the. How does power work everywhere, which is extremely intimidating. And extremely complex, especially if you have never been in that world. So I'm looking at all these different sites, everything from sites powered by coal, sites powered by stranded natural gas. I had some friends that had acquired a site in western Illinois that was like a defunct power plant. They brought it back, they resuscitated it, brought it back to life. They were mining bitcoin, some friends from college. So all of a sudden I start kind of pulling the thread on bitcoin mining. So I, during this journey of looking at and underwriting all of these sites, trying to find a way to tie real estate and bitcoin mining together, which by the way, was extremely hard because all of the people mining bitcoin, nobody owned the real estate. It was all coming from a commercial real estate standpoint. Seeing how how many millions of dollars some of these sites had invested in land that they didn't own, didn't really legally have the right to be on. Like, it was terrifying to me. But also I see, oh my God, this is a huge opportunity. How can, what is that? What does this look like? So I tried to figure that out for a while and this brought us up to September, October of last year. And we got pretty close on a site that would would have been stranded natural gas site. But the issue that we ran into was the land where we would have done the mining was owned by somebody else. There was an agreement to purchase the gas. The agreement that the operator we were going to work with had struck would expire in eight months with no baked in renewals. It would have essentially been a brand new negotiation all over again within eight months after you're deploying all of this capital to set up a mining operations. Like, who would do something like that? That doesn't make any sense. Not to mention all the different tax implications. Like, it just doesn't make any sense. So we ended up pausing on on that site. Now back to the how did we get to the podcast? So I Met Bitcoin Vegas 2025 and I'm there to meet with more people in the mining space, looking at equipment, looking at all these different things. But I had started sharing what I was doing and traveling and looking at these sites on Instagram. My audience on Instagram is we have the Brickle babes on one hand, which is like all girls Miami, very girly entrepreneurs, professional. But like they're very girly. And then they see me going to the Brickle babe stuff. But then I'm over here at the bitcoin conference, now I'm in Texas Looking at stranded natural gas. Now I'm in a bitcoin mining.
A
Do they have questions? Like, what is their reaction?
B
So many questions. My engagement, like, is popping off.
A
Number one. What.
B
What are you doing? Yeah, I'm at the heat. This was February. February, March of 25. I was at the heat reuse conference in Denver. So they are heating, like, the tub that a horse or a cow drinks out of, they'd filled it up with water, and they were heating the water with bitcoin miners. And there I am, like, wearing a bathrobe that says hash rate to heat or something like that.
A
I thought you're gonna say it said Brickle babes.
B
No, it doesn't say brickle babes. Like, hash rate to heat. So they're heating. They were showing us how they could heat pools and heat water with different types of bitcoin miners. And here I am, like, in Denver with my brother and my dad, checking all this out. And I put it on my Instagram. What are you doing? You can heat the bathtub and it mines bitcoin. AKA it's printing money. Can I give you money? The number of messages I got from people asking, can they give me money? Can I set them up with a mining operation? Can I teach them? Can my mom. Can their mom call me?
A
Can my mom call you Emily? Can. Can my mom call you?
B
No, absolutely not. What? What? What? So I. I did start talking to some of my friends. Like, I didn't want to put information on social media at that point because I'm like, I still don't really know what I'm doing. I'm still learning. I'm still trying to figure this out. But how interesting. All these people want to know more. They are curious.
A
Yeah.
B
And they don't understand bitcoin.
A
They're curious if not interested.
B
There was something there. And so I started looking around. I'm like, there's not really anybody that looks like us or talks like us talking about. I'm going to say digital assets, because that's kind of what we call it in the more retail normie population. I can't go around saying to my audience, I only like bitcoin. You get. And I do get there eventually, but I cannot come out and just start talking to them that way. They. To them, it's just another. It's just another crypto. They don't understand the difference. And that's, like, really the narrative right now, I think, in the majority of the world is they don't understand the difference. They don't understand you know, the difference between I'm not going to like, name names, but some of these, like, shit coins and bitcoin, they just truly don't understand the difference. And it's just a lack of education and a lack of somebody explaining it to them in a way that they can understand. I didn't want to watch anything on YouTube or anywhere about bitcoin. I wanted to learn myself and talk to people. There were a few books I read that I liked and a few books that really changed my perspective, but I just. It didn't. It wasn't content out there that was resonating with me. And so that was kind of my aha moment. So I'm like, you know what? Let's see. Clearly, I like free things. That's not a theme of this show.
A
And the takeaway is.
B
The takeaway is, I like Emily likes. I like free things. I mean, look, there's always a value exchange in everything in life, and there's nothing wrong with that. Like, if you have a marketing or media platform, you're giving value to somebody in exchange for something else. That is a. That's a value exchange. It's a. In some capacity. Right. So anyways, I'm like, oh, I want to go to the bitcoin Vegas conference. I wonder if they will give us a media ticket if we are going to teach the Brickell babes about bitcoin. I didn't think they would say yes. My girlfriend and I write to them like, we're going to teach the Brickell babes about bitcoin. I send our media kit because we had a media kit. We immediately get tickets and then they immediately start setting us up with interviews with CEOs of publicly traded companies.
A
Was that surprising to you?
B
That was very surprising to me.
A
Shocking even.
B
I was shocked. I was very confused.
A
Like, what is going on?
B
Extremely confused. What is going on?
A
Did you say in the email that you wanted to interview CEOs?
B
I said I was open to talking to people and I had applied for a press pass and so seemingly this would all make sense. You apply for a press pass. The companies want press and media for their brands.
A
Sure.
B
So they're going to set you up with a meeting.
A
So how did that conference go?
B
Well, so I get these microphones. They're like, you know, those little clip on mics, the mini mics. So we get these little mini mics and you can attach them to like a standing, like a handheld mic with a nice little foam thing on top. We print it out. My. One of my Best friends from, from college. She was, she had recently been laid off. Her company went out of business. They ran out of funding. She was kind of looking for her next thing. I'm like, come with me to this conference. We have no idea who we're going to meet. It could be the next thing or it could not be. So we get these mics, we like put the brand name we'd come up with. We liked the name Bond, B O N D E. Because bitcoin is the only bond that can't be broken. We loved it. We were going to teach women about bitcoin and then also, you know, some entrepreneurship stuff, some financial literacy, all of the things.
A
So you're going to the bitcoin conference as Bond, Bond Media Bond.
B
No, we're just Bond.
A
You're just Bond.
B
We're Bond. And I didn't check. This is a lesson for you guys. I did not check the trademark. There ended up being another company that had just filed like a month earlier, a women's financial literacy education community. Like literally every single one of the things that we would have wanted for our trademark, they had filed for under this name, B O N D E. Which that was a great name. I'm still sad about the name, but I at the time didn't know. So we go to Bitcoin 2025 in Vegas. We have these Mike spawned. Bitcoin is the only bond that can't be broken. I'm here today with Bob Burnett. Bob Burnett. So we had all these interviews with different people and we did short little five minute clips and it was a really great way to just get in front of some big names in the space and have a reason to talk to them. We ended up not publishing any of that content because it was the old name. It wasn't so well done, but at least got me out there and got my, my girlfriend out there meeting people, having conversations and just starting to appear as a professional person in the space. So that was January, not January, June of 2025. And then I had started, you know, people started hearing, okay, Emily wants to do this bitcoin podcast. What does that look like? So it started kind of like trickling around within the bitcoin space. And we host, about once a year we host this full day female empowerment workshop. It's typically 100 to 200 women come. We do all different programming, everything from financial literacy to sound bath and meditation to having different entrepreneurs come talk, different CPG founders, exited founders, brand new founders, all different types of people. And the women come and they network and they learn new things and have coffee, and it's a very. This is what the girls want to do in Miami. And it's typically. It's like women, late 20s to late 40s even 50s, are coming. They're very ambitious. And I decided we're going to do a bitcoin segment, digital asset segment. So I had to give a keynote on what is bitcoin? Why do we care more about bitcoin than the other cryptos? What is blockchain? And I was so nervous, but this was, like, my first time to, like, really stand up there and say, hey, this is what I learned in the last year. I actually want to now start teaching you guys more about this space. So we did a short segment on that, and then I had two different guests come on and in a panel that I interviewed. So one is a top crypto litigator, Greer Griffith, who's over at McDermott. And then one was a forensic analyst at BDO, Maria, I believe her last name is Rodriguez. So I had them up there, and they helped explain from just a different vantage point, you know, what do you need to know about cryptocurrency and digital assets from a legal standpoint as somebody that's curious and wants to get involved in the space, and then from a safety standpoint and like, protecting your. Your investments or your allocation to digital assets, what can you do to make sure you're really setting yourself up safely and securely? So they. They were really great resources and just kind of like, taking things down to, like, a 101 level. And it ended up getting a really positive response from our community. So we ended up filming back in November our first few episodes of Stacked. So between March, April, May, June, we learned we can't have the name Bond anymore. I thought about all summer, what's the name? What's the name? What's the name? Well, Stacked, that's the name of the show. So Stacked is become your own best asset and all areas of your life, whether you're stacking your sats, stacking your satoshis, stacking the deck in your favor, stacking your workout, stacking your protein. Like, there's so many different things you can stack.
A
Stacking your dating. No, that's not a thing.
B
You can stack your relationships, you can stack your network. So it's like, for me, that that word means so much more, but I love that it also is an important terminology term in the bitcoin space. It's kind of like, if you know, you know, and I like that's also helped me get a lot of positive feedback in the bitcoin space because people are like, we stacked. I love stacking sense. Like, I love that.
A
That's. Yeah.
B
But then on the other side, like, my girls, they're like, oh, yeah, like, stack the deck. Like, stack. You know, I'm stacking my workout, my protein. I'm like, and do you know what else you're stacking or you will be soon, once we're done with you, you're going to be stacking your satoshis, stacking your sats. So it's been fun. So we eventually, we came up with just the whole roadmap of, what does this brand look like? What's the vision for it? And that finally launched March 10th of this year, was our first episode. We dropped. We batch a bunch of content, and then we rotate each week through three different parts of our flywheel. So we always touch on entrepreneurship in some capacity. I think it's really important in this day and age for everybody to really take ownership of their career. I think it's great to have experience working in corporate America, but really, entrepreneurship, if it's something you're interested in, is so important. And the best way to learn is learn from other people who've. Who've done it. So we bring a lot of entrepreneurs on. We always have a wellness segment. So that is everything from longevity to gut health to relationships to sleep, health, hormones. Like, that is really important to stack the deck to become the best version of you. And then, of course, the final one is digital assets. And when I say digital assets, we are bitcoin only. We only like bitcoin. But for the sake of appealing to my audience, we say digital assets because that's a more comfortable terminology for them to understand. And then this kind of starts to open the door for them to be curious, what are digital assets? I'm starting to see that terminology everywhere. I'm starting to see all the big banks, my bank, you know, the. The firm my best friend from college works at, or it's. It's much more familiar and comfortable for them. And then as they come in, we'll only ever have guests on our show that are bitcoin people, because I truly only believe in bitcoin. I don't believe in any of the other cryptos. I'm not going to bring a guest that is, you know, promoting those. On the podcast, we might have guests come on that work with all of the cryptos, but every single one of them, if you were to ask them, and we do ask them on the show. Bitcoin or crypto. Every single one of them. Bitcoin.
A
That's super interesting, the digital assets piece, because I feel like that door, it's more professional, it's more credible, it covers the entire ecosystem. So it can mean different things to different people. One person might think some of the examples that you said about what their friends are working on or what they've seen in traditional media. Someone else might think, oh, digital assets could be NFTs or could be like just something that they've seen in culture.
B
Yeah,
A
super interesting.
B
Yeah, I mean, I think it's like, I think about my job is storytelling. How do I tell the story that I. That is going to achieve my goal? And my goal is I want women to understand the future of finance. The future of finance, in my opinion, is contingent on bitcoin. Bitcoin is not going anywhere. It is only continuing to get more and more institutionalized and ingrained in our financial ecosystem as a global society. We're still very early. And for women to understand how this works or how maybe their husband's bitcoin that he's holding and he has a whole bunch of it, but I don't know where it is or how to access it. Like, you have to start somewhere and, you know, listening to a Twitter spaces on people arguing about some. Whatever the hot topic debate is this
A
month, bips and bops and bips and bops and whatever it is. Yeah.
B
If I'm so new to the space and I'm just trying to understand like, what. What is a seed phrase or do I. Is it okay if my bitcoin's on coinbase? I keep hearing that it shouldn't be on, you know, at any brokerage and it should be in a cold wallet. When you're in that phase, you're not going on bitcoin Twitter to like, learn about like that piece. So that is most people and that's where I'm focused on because I think that's really the biggest opportunity to make a difference. And I also think from a business standpoint, that's the next opportunity of like, that's where our mass adoption is going to come from.
A
I've often said over the last few years, mostly in private conversations, that bitcoin has a marketing problem. And I'm not the only one to say it.
B
You're not the only one to say it.
A
So what's the difference? Is it the female voice? Is it the community? Is it both of those things? And how can you. Or we or the community. Expand that from Emily and 70,000.
B
Yeah.
A
Females. To, like, the rest of the world.
B
Millions and billions of people.
A
Yeah, we're just. We're right. We're. We're not getting through.
B
Yeah. I mean, I think, like, look, like bitcoin is a very. It's still very niche. It's still very, like, the community is very small. So now I've been active in the space. This podcast officially launched in March, which brought me some more visibility in the space. I don't. Okay, so you. You tell me you don't know how to use Instagram. I do not know how to use Twitter. It is, like, the scariest thing in the whole world for me.
A
But first, can you explain what's a carousel? What's a still? Just walk us through a story.
B
Yeah, we'll do, like, 101 on Instagram.
A
I mean, I have posts and stories on my Instagram, but beyond that, maybe you can walk us through some of that terminology.
B
Yeah, I'm happy to.
A
I'm happy to start with carousels.
B
Okay. So carousels are like. It's like a digital photo album. So you can post now up to 20 pictures on a post on one post.
A
Okay.
B
And so you can either do, like a photo dump of, like, your family and your kids or your vacation, or you. You can do, like, a little mini ebook. So what we do on our podcast is. On our podcast Instagram page is we'll post educational slideshows. So one we put up last week was. And one we're working on right now is, like, how to buy your first bitcoin. So it's maybe five or six slides. Each page is like a little news article or a little, you know, infographic of how to buy your first bitcoin. One page is step one. Step. The next page is step two. It's very easy to read. It's pretty. You'll start seeing them more on. On my Twitter account now that the algorithm changed. We're getting a lot more engagement on my Twitter, which is very exciting. But all the posts are, like, pink.
A
What happened over the past week where now if you go to someone's profile, you just see their posts, and you have to go to not replies, but reposts to see things. They repost. It's like, now separated.
B
See, I'm so new, I don't even know what changed.
A
It's very wild.
B
I'm confused. Yeah, I just retweet things and like that.
A
Things are changing. That's the takeaway, I guess.
B
I don't understand how that platform works, but I'm trying to show up on it because it is important in the bitcoin ecosphere. It's important in the finance, you know, world to be active on Twitter. But that's not. It's definitely not my primary platform.
A
What is the other podcast we covered? Stacked.
B
Okay, so the other show unstacked or
A
what's the other one?
B
Okay, so you understand now, Stacked, it's like, that's my show. It's my target is, you know, it's the girl buying Botox and bitcoin. It's relatable. A lot of the guests that we have come on, they're just telling their story. So, like, if you ever come on the show, it's probably the easiest bitcoin interview or the hardest, depending on what you're comfortable talking about.
A
I've never had Botox. So we can start there.
B
We can start there. Well, you might be getting Botox at the end of the show. Just kidding. We won't do that to you. So the other show. So I got connected to Corey Clipston back in December of 2025 through a friend. And he. It was a friend from college I'd reconnected with because his dad had also gotten into bitcoin mining and he and his brothers were. Dad, what are you doing? What is this bitcoin mining? What did you read on the Internet? And I also had a similar experience. And then you go down the bitcoin rabbit hole and you can't come out. Anyway, so this friend, he knew Corey, he's like, he knew I was launching the podcast. He's like, you should talk to him. He's like, he's a great person for you to have come on the show. So Corey and I get on a call, he ends up flying. He was coming to Miami for work and, you know, he reached. He lets me know I'll be in Miami. I'm like, great, you're coming on the show. Wasn't even a question, it was a statement. You're coming on the show. Are you available this time or this time? Really laying in my sales skills from four years in commercial real estate. You don't take no for an answer. He's like, okay, great, I can come to the studio at this time. Comes straight off the plane from LA to the studio in Miami. I think he had, like, stopped at his hotel to brush his teeth and we had a two hour interview. And he was, at the time, like, hands down, my biggest guest. I was so intimidated. He's, you know, he's very smart. He's like, you know, he's such, like, deep in the bitcoin space. And I was still very like, on the surface, kind of topical exploring it, really focused on explaining it to my audience. But we ended up having a really good conversation and covered a lot of interesting topics and ended up. I spent the rest of the day with him and the team at Swann. There was an investor lunch, and then they had a Swan salon in Brickell and just got to know them. And everybody's like, really great and cool. And then it was consensus time. Consensus was in Miami. Corey and I reconnected and I had asked him like, hey, do you have any other recommendations for people who might be in town for consensus that would be a good fit for my show? And he's like, emily, I think we should start another show. Let's. Let's start going live on Twitter once a week. And so it just kind of all happened organically. So that show is called Get Real. I co host with Corey Clipston. We stream every Thursday at noon. And it's a bitcoin news show. So I have my show that's like, kind of like the entry level version. And then this other show is all bitcoin news. We cover some of the hot trending topics of the week. We always do, you know, some fun history moments and some terminology. So it's. It's been really fun and a great way to be connected to the industry and, and get more involved and just meet more people.
A
That's awesome. Yeah. Corey's always been very supportive and he seems to be everywhere all the time.
B
Yeah.
A
Which is very cool.
B
I don't think he sleeps. He's always so busy and doing so much. But no, he's been a great resource, a great friend, and I've learned a lot from him and it's been a lot of fun. So if you guys don't watch the show, you should tune in both of them. Our episodes were stacked. Release on Tuesdays at 7:00am Eastern Time. And then Get Real is live. It's also. All of these shows are on YouTube. LinkedIn. They're everywhere.
A
Follow Emily on Twitter, YouTube, Instagram. We'll put all the links that you sent me in the comments below.
B
We're everywhere.
A
So the corporate adoption of bitcoin. Bitcoin treasuries. Are you a bitcoin treasuries hater? What's your position?
B
So I am not.
A
Okay. I guess you probably wouldn't have shown up to the New York studio if you were Totally against bitcoin.
B
No, no. So I.
A
But we didn't talk about it.
B
No, we didn't talk about.
A
This is, you know, first conversation.
B
So I look, I am like pro mass bitcoin adoption. I am pro sound money. I studied. I majored in economics. I love how the financial system should work and I recognize that it's broken from somebody. From my vantage point, I care about mass adoption. I don't care if you have an etf. I don't care if you have bitcoin. You're getting exposure through Bitcoin treasury company. I don't care where the exposure comes from. I care if you are curious and you are learning and you are starting to get your feet wet and whatever you're comfortable with, I support it. Which isn't the same stance as a lot of the people in the space, a lot of my peers. I look at it from more of a traditional finance lens and I see this as a product with the supply and demand. And if you want to buy the purple version or the blue version or the green version, go for it.
A
How would you explain bitcoin treasury companies to your girlfriend? And this is not meant to put you on the spot or be like, I got your question, but like buying like cold storage or Coinbase or an etf. But then like, treasury companies are like a whole different public company wrapper. And there's all this like complex math and terms that no one understands. There's podcasts that go on for hours on end. Even Michael Saylor himself trying to like, explain what MNAV is or what book. And it's like, there's an eight minute explanation from Michael Saylor on, like, what MNAV is, like, that seems kind of, it seems kind of complicated. How would you, like, what would you say to a friend that's just like, curious, like, what is that?
B
What is that? So I would say to a friend, I would say if you are looking to get bitcoin exposure, I think that maybe is more of like, if we're talking about a ski mountain that's maybe more of like a black diamond for complexity sake, if you want exposure, I would maybe start with something else. But if you're looking for something that you want to force yourself to learn about Bitcoin and you want to understand and maybe there's more reward or more risk, that's an interesting route to go down. How I would explain to someone in my audience what is a bitcoin treasury company? And this is going to be super topical because this is, you know, a different Version a different type of audience. But I would say a bitcoin treasury company is a company that is holding bitcoin and they have a strategy around what they are doing with that bitcoin and they might also have other business initiatives that they do as well. So you really want to understand the company holistically and not just look at them because they own a bunch of bitcoin on paper. You need to understand what else is their business model and what else are they doing and how are they analyzing, how are they, what is their risk appetite and what is their other primary business. Because just because they have bitcoin on their balance sheet doesn't mean that that's all that is there. That would be something more like very generally speaking that would be more like an ETF. There's different types of ETFs, yield ETF products, spot ETF products. Gets a little more complicated than that. But that's at a very high level. Very high, high level. That's how I would probably explain it.
A
Are you surprised that there's already like Bitcoin treasuries.net with a ranked list of the top 100 Bitcoin treasury companies. Does it feel early to you? Does it feel like, well that's the natural progression of adoption. Like what's kind of your.
B
I do not seeing what I've seen in the last 12 months. I do not think it is too early. I think this was all people were talking about a year ago was bitcoin treasury companies. I remember being at Bitcoin Vegas with some friends that were not in, they are not doing currently any business in bitcoin and they were talking about dude, like, like should we do a bitcoin treasury company? Like it was the hot topic of 2025. So no, I'm not surprised at all. But I think it is, it's definitely a strategy and it is something to like really take seriously and understand.
A
I've got three items for you from the news today. Speaking of and this is not meant to, this is not meant to rip you and Corey off.
B
But just to get, no, there's totally enough room for everyone just, just to
A
get your, your reaction. So just Today there's been $700 billion added to the US stock market. What is your reaction to that? Like if it's 700 billion today, there's going to be days when there's like a trillion easily maybe like $10 trillion of value added to the the US stock market, not the global stock market. Are the numbers just becoming too big what's your quick 30 second take on that? We'll get to the Other2.
B
My 30 second take on how many did you say?
A
700 billion?
B
700 billion added today. I think there's a lot of volatility right now. I think there's a lot of AI hype that is on one hand very exciting, but on the other hand it's very scary. And I think it's definitely right now it's time. I feel like I'm watching and watching from the sidelines right now.
A
You just set me up perfectly. As a segue to this second point, the Trump administration just announced it will redirect billions in federal research funding from universities to AI. Is that a top signal or is that just the next. The next thing in AI?
B
Okay, so I actually have a. Maybe it's a controversial take here, but so I am seeing a lot of. I do not have children. I have a lot of friends with children, young children that are using AI in school right now. And they're actually doing quite well or they're using it.
A
AI is helping them.
B
It is helping them tremendously. There's a school called the Alpha School. I have a few friends with kids at the Alpha School and these kids do like, I think an hour, two hours of regular school a day. And then they're on iPads, computers, doing AI the entire rest of the, the day. There are now they're pushing out lesson planning and tools to help teachers using AI. I think if you can figure out how to combine AI with the education system that is going to help us propel the next generation forward. So I don't know if it's the. A top signal. I see it as very exciting. I see it as imperative to understand AI. So my community is hosting on a monthly basis. Right now we have, it's called Coffee and Claude. It is a Claude meetup one Saturday a month from 11 to 5. I live in Miami. There is 75 people that come out one Saturday a month. They do not want to be outside playing paddle golf, tennis. They want to sit inside together and
A
learn Claude for six hours straight.
B
For six hours on a Saturday. It sells out every month. In fact, the, the venue that we host at asked me last week if we wanted to do this twice a month because it's so popular. We'll bring in a different educator. They do about 30 minutes an hour sharing how they're using Claude in their business. And there's no professionals here. Nobody's a pro in AI right now because it's so new. So it's really just different people sitting down, figuring out how to use the tools themselves. And then they come share with the kids, with this community. And these events are co ed too. So if you're in Miami, you'll. You'll have to come. Anybody listening?
A
So guys are allowed.
B
Guys are allowed. So we do a couple events that are co ed. And for me, this was important to extend to everybody because I think it's. I love AI. I think it is really, really powerful when used, you know, in conjunction with other tools in your life. I don't think you can just send everything to AI. It's not the answer for everything. But if you can integrate it and help you, it can help you grow your business, it can help you in so many different capacities that why wouldn't you want to learn? So we opened this up to everybody. And why am I saying all of this? Oh, the education and the trump reallocating funding. I think this will help make schools more efficient. It will help children, high school kids, college kids, learn how to use AI and build better, more efficient things. And AI is. This is a hot topic, depending on who you talk to. But AI, from where I see, see, it is decentralizing something in the technology space that has historically been reserved for people who had to get PhDs and spend all these years and decades coding and understanding super complicated systems. That barrier has been completely eliminated in less than, what, six months now. Everybody's in cloud, everyone's in Claude code, everybody. You can do anything. And so now we've completely opened up access and decentralized technology for the masses. There's a flip side to what I'm saying where, you know, these big companies control the AI. They can change it at any moment. It's going to be cost prohibitive. It's being subsidized. Yes, of course, that's a whole other topic we won't get into today. But I think from the grand scheme of things, it's very similar to what's happening with Bitcoin and kind of the thesis on why do we like Bitcoin. It's decentralized money and decentralized currency. We see the same thing with AI. So I see it as a positive. I like efficiency. Efficiency is my love language.
A
That's a good love language, efficiency. Maybe this is a good segue. I don't know. We'll see. Speaking of efficiency, we're going to go for it. Just revealed the Telegram founder just announced that the app will roll out a native, non custodial crypto wallet to their more than 1 billion users. I mean, it sounds good for bitcoin. Your reaction to that and maybe also ask, where does all of this go? We're in this attention economy. I reposted something today. An account on Twitter said, basically, we're living in a time when you have free access to millions of individuals as your audience. You can have basically two people working for you for less than $400 a month. Is this arguably like the best, most fascinating time to be alive? And what do you do with that? Where does all of this go? Where you have creators, sometimes with larger audiences than like cnbc and like, what does the future look like? Like, do they coexist? How does this all go since you know the future?
B
I definitely don't know the future, but I love the way you framed this question because I think you just touched on these three topics. I think they're the most important topics in the world right now. It's. And it's all boiling down to decentralization. I think that's the mass shift we are seeing culturally as a world right now. So we first saw it with media, social media. We see the decentralization of mainstream media. People are coming to Twitter, Instagram, all of these other sources, going to creators, newscasters create creators who previously run mega broadcast networks are leaving or getting fired only to build their own media companies and have their own followings and their own newsletters and their own everything. So we have decentralization. I think it really first started with social media and the media capacity. Then we saw it with digital assets, cryptocurrency. Obviously it all started with bitcoin, but bitcoin's the only one that really matters. But we had, you know, the swirl and excitement around all the others, and now we have AI And AI is the same thing. It's this decentralization putting, you know, access to, to build and create into the hands of so many people. But for the reason, because the reason of. Because how technology works. AI is getting all of the news right now. We're not even talking about the creator economy, the decentralization of media. There's been so much really exciting news coming out in the last three, four months on bitcoin. That's like huge wins for the digital asset space. They're not even making headlines. The fact that we had a, the first home purchased with a Fannie Mae backed bitcoin loan, that is like the, that should be like the biggest headline of the year. I get so excited about that story. A $4.2 million home in Boca was purchased using Bitcoin backed mortgage approved by the federal government. That's huge news. Didn't even make a blip in the radar because it was the same, you know, two week period that SpaceX was IPOing. So this. And I know SpaceX isn't an AI company, but it's kind of all part of this big tech boom right now that we see. This AI shift that we're seeing is also a decentralization plan. I think they're actually all completely tied together and it is a shift in what our society globally is demanding and what people want. People want to control. They want the freedom to make their own choices and whether that's what media they're watching, what news they're consuming, how they're building a business, how they're running their lives, how they're teaching their children. I have friends that are programming their
A
own
B
agents to set up education courses for their kids and they're doing that at home and they're doing. My friend has a 4 year old that's doing like 6th or 7th grade math problems now through an agent that he built to teach his kid on Claude. That's incredible. Like, that's amazing.
A
That's super cool.
B
That's super cool. There's definitely some negatives, but we don't need to talk about them now. We can save that for another day. I think it's a really positive, exciting time. But there's a lot. There's more shifts happening, it feels like now than ever. Do you feel that way?
A
I do. AI, Bitcoin, energy, everything that we've talked
B
about, it's all compounding.
A
I know there's probably several places, but where can people find you on the Internet?
B
Well, I think your audience is mostly on Twitter. So you guys can follow me on Twitter, miliedempsey, Instagram, LinkedIn, all of the places. I'm Emily Dempsey. If you want to check out my show Stacked. We are on YouTube, Spotify, Apple. Stacked by Emily Dempsey. And if you are interested in the Brickell Babes, you can check out the Brickell Babes. We post our coffee and cod events there. Men and women welcome. If you guys want to join, those are monthly in Miami and yeah, that's where I'm a lot of places.
A
Thank you so much for making the time to come in. It's always awesome to do it in person.
B
I love in person.
A
Appreciate it and we will be following along and hope to have you back on the pod.
B
Definitely. This was so fun. Thank you for having me.
A
Thanks Emily.
In this engaging and wide-ranging conversation, host Tim Kotzman interviews Emily Dempsey, Miami-based entrepreneur, digital community builder, and rising voice in both the social media and Bitcoin ecosystems. Emily shares her journey from Instagram influencer to founder of one of Miami's largest women's communities, her foray into Bitcoin mining and podcasting, and her insights on the broader movement of decentralization across media, finance, and technology. The episode is a mix of practical entrepreneurial advice, social media tactics, and philosophical musings on where power and community are shifting in the attention economy of 2026.
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This episode is an energetic deep dive into the changing nature of influence, finance, and community. Emily Dempsey brings both practical wisdom (media kits and legal paperwork!) and a big-picture vision: the future will belong to those who can leverage decentralization to build communities, educate, and remain adaptive. Her central message? Stay curious, move fast, cultivate authentic connections—and always keep stacking, whatever your arena.