Emily Cocea, a first-year law student at the University of Michigan, has revealed she makes $1.3 million a year posting adult content online. Known online as “hotblockchain,” Cocea has built a following of nearly 3 million across Instagram and TikTok. She also sells exclusive photos and videos to her followers.
Cocea started creating content while in high school in Los Angeles. She says she began posting online to support herself after her father passed away when she was 15, leaving her family in financial difficulty. By the time she turned 18, she had developed her online persona and began monetizing her content, earning roughly $250,000 in her first year.
Despite her online success, Cocea has kept one boundary: she has never posted fully nude content. She describes her photos and videos as “lewd” but emphasizes that she mostly sells personal connections with her followers. She often livestreams her study sessions and spends hours responding to paying subscribers.
Cocea graduated from Carnegie Mellon University before starting law school. She scored 172 on the LSAT, placing her in the 99th percentile. She is committed to becoming a public defender and hopes to help others, including women in the adult entertainment industry, with legal issues.
While her peers initially teased her about her online work, they quickly came to respect it as a serious business. Cocea believes her online career has not hindered her scholastic or professional ambitions. “This is not a barrier to scholastic or professional success,” she told PEOPLE.
Cocea’s story highlights the growing ways young people can fund their education through online platforms while pursuing ambitious professional goals.
