They Hate Me Because I Have Everything

What was the point of working so hard if everything I worked for could be taken away?

That is the question I keep coming back to. I saved my money. I delayed gratification. I put money into gold, invested in Bitcoin early, and committed years of my life to building a company. I did the things I believed a person was supposed to do to create a more secure future. Now the government has seized assets I spent those years accumulating, and the security I thought I was building feels as though it has been pulled out from underneath me.

There is a polished way to describe that experience. There is also the way it feels: What the fuck was all of that work for?

I am not asking because I suddenly believe the work had no value. I am asking because the loss reaches backward. It makes you revisit the choices, sacrifices, and plans that brought you here. You remember what you decided not to spend. You remember why you kept going. And you struggle to reconcile the discipline of those years with the reality in front of you.

I thought I was building security

Saving money was never just a number on a screen to me. It was a way of giving my future some protection. Every decision to save instead of spend carried a belief: that I could do something today that would make tomorrow less uncertain.

That is what delayed gratification asks of you. You give up something immediate for something you cannot yet hold. You accept that the reward may take years. You try to be thoughtful about where your money goes because you understand how much effort it took to earn it.

I saved in gold. I invested in Bitcoin before it became as widely discussed and accepted as it is today. I believed in its possibilities early enough to take the risk of being wrong. Those were decisions I made about the future, and I lived with the uncertainty that came with them.

When assets are seized, the statement of an account cannot explain what has been interrupted. It cannot show the purchases you postponed or the comfort you went without because you were trying to create something more lasting. What looks like a balance to someone else can represent years of restraint to the person who built it.

That is why this hurts the way it does. I thought I was putting something aside that my family and I could depend on. Now I am fighting over the very things I believed would help protect us.

There was nothing effortless about building it

The same is true of Crypto Dispensers. People can say the name of a company in a second. They cannot understand the work behind it that quickly.

I moved ATMs. I installed them. I worked through the practical problems of putting machines in place and figuring out how the business would function. There was physical work behind the idea, along with decisions, setbacks, and problems that still needed an answer when the excitement of starting something had worn off.

Believing in Bitcoin did not do that work for me. Neither did ambition. A business had to be built around the belief, and building it meant returning to details that were often difficult, frustrating, and invisible to anyone who only saw the finished result.

Then the idea developed further. I worked to create Bitcoin POP and a different way for people to access Bitcoin through retail cash loading. My ambition for Crypto Dispensers grew beyond the ATM business: I wanted to build an on-ramp with global reach, a company that could make access more practical for more people.

That was the direction I was working toward. It took imagination to see it, but imagination was only the beginning. The rest demanded effort, money, persistence, and a willingness to keep solving the next problem.

When I say I worked hard for what I have, I am talking about that entire process. I am talking about the distance between believing something should exist and accepting the responsibility of trying to make it exist.

The loss is bigger than the assets

Having assets seized does something to your understanding of control. You can spend years making careful decisions and still reach a moment when you cannot access what you believed you had secured.

The effect is financial, but it is also deeply personal. Plans that once felt possible become questions. The future you were working toward becomes harder to picture. You find yourself measuring the distance between what you built and what you can actually rely on now.

I am defending myself against a federal money-laundering conspiracy allegation that I deny. I know that describing my work does not resolve the allegation. The case must turn on evidence about my conduct. But the allegation does not erase the history of that work, and a seizure does not make the human cost of losing access to those assets disappear.

I wanted to build a legitimate company. I wanted to save responsibly, invest thoughtfully, and create something I could be proud of. Those intentions are part of my account, and I want the work behind them to be examined seriously.

What I cannot accept emotionally is the idea that the years before this somehow stop counting. They count to me. They count to my family. They are the reason there is so much at stake.

Why it feels like resentment

“They hate me because I have everything” is what anger sounds like when it has nowhere useful to go. It is the feeling that the life you worked to build has become something people look at with suspicion instead of curiosity.

I cannot know whether anyone resents me, and I cannot honestly claim that jealousy explains a government decision. What I can describe is the experience of looking at what is being taken from you and wondering why the effort behind it seems so easy to overlook.

From the outside, success can look like possession: a company, an investment, an asset. From the inside, it is inseparable from the decisions that produced it. I remember the work when I look at those things. I remember what I hoped they would make possible.

So when I say I have everything, I am also describing everything I put into this. My savings. My ambition. My confidence in a future I could help create. Years of trying to turn those things into something durable.

I do not need everyone to admire that effort. I need it to remain part of the truth.

“Build anyway” is harder when it is your life

There is a line I have returned to, one widely associated with Mother Teresa but originally written by Kent M. Keith in The Paradoxical Commandments:

“What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway.”

Keith’s original text contains those words. He also describes their connection to Mother Teresa and the version displayed at her children’s home.

Before something like this happens to you, the line can sound inspirational. Afterward, you feel the weight of what it is asking. Build anyway means finding a reason to begin when you have already learned that effort cannot guarantee security. It means looking at the possibility of another loss and deciding that your ability to create still matters.

I am not going to pretend I arrive at that conclusion easily every day. Some days I am angry. Some days the question is still why I bothered to save, why I took the risks, why I worked so hard to figure it all out.

The quote does not answer those questions for me. It gives me something to do while I am still living with them. I can defend what I built and continue to believe that building was worthwhile. I can grieve what has been taken from my reach without surrendering every ambition that led me to create it.

I still want the years to mean something

I want what I worked for back. I want the opportunity to defend myself through evidence. I want my family to have the security I was trying to create, and I want the company I built to be understood through the full record of its work.

I do not owe anyone a cheerful description of what this feels like. There is nothing uplifting about watching the future you planned become uncertain. There is nothing easy about being told to remain patient when patience and sacrifice were how you built that future in the first place.

But I also know what those years taught me. I learned how to save, how to take a risk, how to install a machine, how to work through a problem, and how to keep moving an idea toward reality. Those experiences changed me. Losing access to assets cannot make them unhappen.

I am still angry. I am still asking what the point was. And I am still the person who wanted to build something useful enough to outlast the difficult years it took to create.

That is where “build anyway” begins for me: with the work I still believe in, and the refusal to let this be the only thing my years of effort ever mean.

And there is something else I refuse to surrender: my belief in myself and my faith in God. They can seize assets. They can interrupt the life I planned and force me to defend the work I spent years building. They cannot take away the conviction that I still have something worthwhile to offer, or the faith that God sees my heart when other people see only an accusation.

I believe God protects and sustains people whose intentions are clean and good. To me, that does not mean a life without suffering. It means I can ask for strength in the middle of it, trust that I am not facing it alone, and keep choosing honesty, courage, and purpose even when anger would be easier. I know what I set out to build. I know the life I was trying to create for my family. I carry that knowledge into every day of this fight.

There are days when the only honest words I have for what they are putting me through are: this is bullshit. My faith does not require me to pretend otherwise. It asks me to decide what I will do with the pain. I intend to turn it into discipline, clarity, and a deeper commitment to the person I have worked to become.

I believe I will prevail. I believe I will come through this stronger, with a clearer understanding of what matters and a faith that has been tested by more than words. That belief is how I keep going. Whatever they take from my reach, I will not hand over my belief in myself, my trust in God, or my willingness to build again.

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