When we started building Crypto Dispensers, I expected the usual difficulties of starting a business around an unfamiliar technology. We would have to earn people's trust, explain how Bitcoin worked, and invest in an idea whose future was uncertain. What I had not fully understood was how much of our effort would go toward securing something most businesses take for granted: a bank account.
That problem followed us from our earliest attempts to buy Bitcoin into the daily operation of our ATM business. Accounts closed, applications went nowhere, and relationships we needed to run the company remained uncertain. Over time, those experiences became more than an operational frustration. They gave me a personal understanding of the dependence Bitcoin was meant to address—and a stronger reason to keep building access to it.
Our first encounters with that resistance came while we were using personal bank accounts to purchase Bitcoin through platforms such as Coinbase, Coinmama, and Gemini. In our experience, once a bank recognized the connection to Bitcoin, an ordinary banking relationship could become a problem. Sometimes an account was closed before we could even complete the purchase.
To us, buying Bitcoin was an early step toward participating in a technology we believed had a future. Yet taking that step depended on an institution willing to let the transaction proceed. We could decide that Bitcoin was worth our time and money; we could not decide whether our bank would continue to serve us once it understood what we intended to do.
That distinction became increasingly important as our ambitions grew. A closed personal account was disruptive enough. Building a company meant accepting responsibilities that would continue regardless of whether a bank wanted the relationship. As we moved from buying Bitcoin ourselves to helping other people access it, the consequences of losing banking support became much larger.
Operating Bitcoin ATMs made the banking problem more complicated because the business brought together two activities a bank had to be willing to support: cryptocurrency and substantial cash deposits. Customers inserted cash into the machines to buy Bitcoin. We collected that cash and brought it to our business checking accounts. Those deposits were a direct consequence of how our service worked.
The difficulty was finding a banking relationship that could accommodate the entire operation. A bank's willingness to work with a Bitcoin company did not necessarily mean it was willing to accept the volume of cash generated by the ATMs. Conversely, a bank accustomed to cash-intensive businesses could still reject the connection to cryptocurrency. We needed both forms of support in the same relationship.
Instead, we encountered closures and refusals to open accounts. Even the name of the business could become an obstacle. Our company was Virtual Assets LLC, doing business as Crypto Dispensers. Those names plainly described the field we had chosen to enter, but in some banking conversations they seemed to settle the question before we had an opportunity to explain the operation.
This made growth unusually difficult. Serving more customers meant handling more cash, while handling more cash could make an already fragile banking relationship harder to maintain. The work of expanding the business therefore carried an additional burden: repeatedly securing the basic infrastructure needed to sustain it.
A bank account rarely appears in the story a founder tells about an idea. It is assumed to be there, alongside the other ordinary tools a business needs. When that assumption fails, the consequences reach well beyond the inconvenience of finding another institution.
Each refusal or closure sent us back into the search for a workable relationship. We had to explain the business again, determine whether another bank could support its activity, and devote attention to a problem that never felt conclusively resolved. That attention came from the same limited supply we needed for customers, operations, and the development of the company.
The uncertainty also changed how we experienced progress. Solving a business problem usually allows a founder to move on to the next one. With banking, a solution could remain provisional. An account might exist today while leaving us unsure how durable the relationship would prove as the business continued to operate.
This is the part of persistence that the language of entrepreneurship often leaves out. Determination has a practical cost: the time spent repeating work, the energy required to explain yourself again, and the willingness to keep investing in a company whose foundations can still be unsettled by somebody else's decision. We endured that cost because the reason we had started the business remained stronger than the reasons to stop.
We believed Bitcoin should be accessible to people who wanted to participate in it. Its existence alone could not accomplish that. There was still a distance between hearing about a new form of money and having a practical way to acquire it, understand it, and take responsibility for holding it.
Our business was an effort to close that distance. The ATMs gave people a way to use cash to buy Bitcoin, connecting a familiar way of paying with a technology that was still unfamiliar to many. Making that connection possible required physical operations, customer education, and banking arrangements behind the scenes. The promise of access depended on people willing to do that work.
We chose to be among them before the opportunity was obvious to everyone around us. We committed our time and resources because we believed the idea deserved to be built. That commitment reflected what I had always understood the American entrepreneurial spirit to mean: the willingness to take responsibility for an uncertain undertaking, invest in yourself, and continue when the path becomes difficult.
Repeated banking obstacles tested that belief. They also brought the purpose of the business into sharper focus. We were trying to widen access to a financial technology while experiencing, firsthand, how easily access to established financial infrastructure could become uncertain. The connection between those two experiences is what made Bitcoin's promise increasingly personal to me.
Losing a banking relationship teaches you something about the difference between owning an asset and depending on another institution to provide access to it. A bank account places much of everyday financial activity within a relationship the bank can choose to end. For a business, that decision can disrupt the ability to operate even when the founders remain committed, the customers still want the service, and the work still needs to be done.
Bitcoin offers a different arrangement when a person holds it in a wallet whose private keys they control. Those keys authorize transfers on the Bitcoin network; a bank does not maintain the balance or approve each transfer. That is the specific form of independence I mean when I talk about people being their own bank.
That independence carries responsibility. Losing the keys can mean losing access to the Bitcoin, transfers generally cannot be reversed, and the value of the asset can fall. Holding your own keys also does not replace every service or protection associated with a bank account. It changes who controls the asset and who bears responsibility for safeguarding it.
Our company still needed a business checking account because our customers paid in cash and our operations existed in the conventional economy. There was no contradiction in recognizing that practical need while believing people should have another way to hold value. The experience of relying on banks helped explain why an alternative mattered. It gave substance to a principle that might otherwise have remained abstract: access to what you own should not depend entirely on the willingness of one institution to maintain a relationship with you.
When I say we fought the banks, I am describing years of trying to keep a Bitcoin business operating through refusals, closures, and uncertainty. The struggle was woven into the work itself. Finding a bank, maintaining the relationship, and starting over when necessary became part of what it took to bring the service to our customers.
I cannot speak for every bank or explain every decision made about our accounts. I can describe the cumulative effect those experiences had on us. They made building harder, demanded more of our time, and repeatedly tested whether we were willing to continue. They also strengthened my belief that people deserve meaningful choices about how they hold and use their money.
I still believe in the ambition that led us to build Crypto Dispensers. I believe in founders who commit themselves before success is assured, and in an American dream that gives people with unfamiliar ideas a fair chance to pursue them. Living out that belief required us to continue through obstacles that enthusiasm alone could never resolve.
We kept building because we believed Bitcoin had a place in ordinary people's lives, and because making that possible required someone to do the difficult, unglamorous work of creating access. The banks could decide whether they wanted our business. Our responsibility was to decide whether we still believed enough in the work to continue. Through every closed account and every new search for a banking relationship, our answer remained yes.
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