I am not going to pretend we were unhappy when the business began to work. We were happy. We were proud. Sometimes we were loud about it.
Bitcoin was rising. People wanted access to it. The machines we had spent months trying to place were serving customers in shopping malls. An idea that had once existed mostly in conversations, calculations, and our own stubborn belief had become something we could stand in front of and touch.
Of course we celebrated. We had spent too much time wondering whether any of it would work to feel nothing when it finally did.
When I look at the company’s history, I remember what happened outside the frame.
I remember trying to persuade someone to give us a location. I remember the first installation at Woodfield Mall and the responsibility that came with finally getting a yes. A machine had to be purchased, transported, installed, connected, and maintained. Customers needed help. Problems needed answers. Every new location brought another set of details that would not take care of themselves.
Expansion meant doing that work again, farther from home, with more money committed and more people depending on us to get it right.
That is the part a photograph cannot hold. It can capture a glass raised at dinner. It cannot capture the months someone spent wondering whether they could afford to keep going.
I wanted to build a company, and I wanted that company to change my life.
I wanted security. I wanted independence. I wanted to take care of my family and enjoy experiences I had once imagined from a distance. I wanted to sit beside people who had known me before any of this and feel that our lives were moving forward.
The American dream has always included the possibility that effort might lead to a better life. We tell people to take a chance, build something useful, save their money, and believe in themselves. Enjoying the result belongs in that story too.
We believed in Bitcoin and watched its value rise. We also built a business around people who wanted a practical way to buy it. Those were different sources of opportunity, but together they made those years feel extraordinary.
Some of the people beside me had known me long before there was a business.
One of them was a childhood friend. We had grown up down the street from each other, gone through school together, and known each other’s families for years. Our friendship belonged to a part of my life that existed before Bitcoin, before the machines, before anyone had a reason to take an interest in our company.
When we celebrated, I was sharing those moments with someone who remembered where I started. We had spent years imagining what our lives might become. Now there were machines in shopping malls, customers using them, and responsibilities that had once seemed far beyond our reach.
I am not going to rewrite those years into a collection of quiet dinners and modest smiles. We went out. We turned the music up. We spent money. There were moments when cash went into the air.
A night of celebration from my personal archive. A childhood friend and former business partner throws cash into the air.
I understand how those images can look to someone who was not there. An extravagant celebration can seem careless or boastful. People are entitled to dislike it. Looking back, I can recognize that a moment enjoyed among friends can acquire a very different meaning when strangers watch it years later.
But a celebration does not explain the finances behind it. A video cannot tell someone how a business earned its income, what an investment cost, or what work preceded a particular night. Those questions require records and context.
I remember the next morning, too. The machines still needed attention. The customers still needed service. The next location still needed to open. A good night did not relieve us of the responsibility we had taken on.
Some of those friendships are painful to think about today.
I cannot speak for another person’s intentions. I can speak about what the friendship meant to me. The years we spent growing up together were real. So were the affection between our families, the hopes we shared, and the happiness in those rooms.
What has happened since does not make those memories disappear. It makes them harder to carry.
I look at those photographs and videos and remember people I cared about, a company I believed in, and a period when the future felt open.
I do not want a company history that preserves every struggle and conceals every smile. That would leave out something true.
We worked hard. We played hard. Sometimes we played harder than we should have. I can acknowledge the excess without pretending the happiness was false or the effort behind it did not exist.
I wanted more from life, and I worked to build it. When there was finally room to enjoy some of it, I did.
Whatever comes next, I will remember those years in their fullness: the pressure, the ambition, the exhausting days, the friendships, and the nights when we looked around at one another and could hardly believe how far we had come.
We were building a business because we wanted a better life. For a while, we got to feel what that meant.
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