Rachel Siegal Reveals What Bitcoin Critics Miss Most

What we talked about.

In this episode, Sunny Ray sits down with Rachel Siegal, known online as Crypto Finally, to trace her unconventional path into Bitcoin. Rachel recounts a restless early career in New York City, from gymnastics and competitive debate as a teen to freelance production work, including three years running the creative back end for Blue Man Group and stints substitute teaching K-12, including special needs classrooms. She describes struggling financially on a 40,000 dollar salary in an expensive city and feeling boxed out of traditional career paths. A chance invitation to Consensus 2018 introduced her to crypto culture, leading to work on the YouTube channel Kryptonauts before she launched her own brand, Crypto Finally, in November 2018. She details the meticulous business plan and unconventional SEO tactics, including visiting internet cafes to watch her own videos, that helped her content go viral almost immediately. The conversation blends personal history with the early grassroots hustle culture of crypto content creation.

Rachel Siegal traces her wild path from Blue Man Group and substitute teaching to becoming Crypto Finally.

The questions, and the answers.

Where did we first meet?

We met in Toronto, I think at CryptoChicks, which predated the Futurist Conference, or maybe it was the second Futurist Conference. We were playing a really heated game of chess with a lot of people watching us. I remember it being a lot of fun, and I really loved Toronto.

What was your life like before Bitcoin, starting from your first jobs?

I was always a jack of all trades, kind of a quirky generalist. I did gymnastics, played rock drums, competed in policy debate in New York State, and was the only girl on the AV team. My first real job was at a fine foods store as a cashier, which I was terrible at and never did retail again.

Tell us about working for Blue Man Group.

I worked there for three years doing social and commercial content, supervising the production space, building sets, working lights, and literally running around yelling at people to get off pogo sticks. It was around 60 hours a week including physical labor and international distribution, and I was paid 40,000 dollars a year, which felt like a fortune at the time.

What was substitute teaching like, and how did it prepare you for crypto?

I taught K through 12 in New York City, mostly in District 75 schools with children who have special needs like autism and Down syndrome. I started around age 23. It taught me that if you can get 30 children to sit down, you can talk to a room full of adult men, which turned out to be surprisingly useful in crypto.

What was your relationship with money like back then?

I was incredibly irresponsible. I never bought anything expensive, but I bought a lot of cheap, dumb stuff I didn't need, like spending 200 dollars a month at Forever 21 on a 40,000 dollar salary. I had no savings, similar to the average American with about 400 dollars in the bank, and I'd still order UberEats anyway.

How did you get into crypto content, starting with Kryptonauts?

Friends from my production days invited me to Consensus 2018 in New York, and I ended up at crypto after parties knowing nothing about blockchain. They saw how well I connected with the community and asked me to help with their YouTube channel, Kryptonauts, where I worked on marketing, social, and scripts behind the scenes with a guy named Geo.

How did Crypto Finally come about, and where did the name originate?

After a falling out ended Kryptonauts, I launched Crypto Finally, posting my first content as myself on November 1st, 2018. The name was kind of a hammy pun, something like I'm finally here, chosen mainly because it was available across all handles. I never expected people would actually start calling me Finally in real life.

What did you do to grow your audience early on?

I spent two months doing eight hours a day of online classes on SEO, search dominance, and algorithms, and wrote a 20 page business plan before launching. In the first week after posting, I even went to coffee shops and internet cafes around New York to watch my own YouTube videos just to signal the algorithm that people cared.