Back in New York, Jason's second sports bet hit.
Benny's voice crackled through the burner phone. "You're a damn oracle. Patriots just wiped the floor with the Colts. Your 10-to-1 parlay hit."
Jason leaned back, satisfaction curling at the edge of his mouth. "How much?"
"Sixty grand. After my cut and keeping it quiet, you've got fifty-five in cash. When do you want it?"
"ASAP. We're building something big, Benny. I need more runway."
Benny chuckled. "Don't get greedy, genius. You've beaten the house twice. They're gonna start watching you."
"They can watch all they want. Just keep the money moving."
He hung up.
Fifty-five thousand. It wasn't much compared to what was coming, but it was seed capital, and that made all the difference.
Jason wired ten grand to Amy the next day, no strings attached.
She called within minutes.
"You trying to buy me off?"
"Nope. Just investing in your future."
"I haven't agreed to anything yet."
"You already did. You just don't realize it."
She paused. "What do you want me to build?"
Jason opened his notebook and started listing specs.
"A secure, anonymous, decentralized payment protocol. Think encrypted digital tokens with proof-of-work validation. No banks. Peer-to-peer only. We'll call it something else—not Bitcoin, not yet. But it'll be the skeleton key to the next century."
Amy whistled. "You're really going all-in on the crypto idea?"
"It's just the start. I'm going to create a shadow map of the real future. You'll build it. I'll steer it."
Amy laughed softly. "You sound insane."
"Insanity is just clarity ahead of schedule."
They started building that week.
Amy in Boston, writing code like a woman possessed.
Jason in New York, setting up shell companies, scouting undervalued domains, and planning Phase 3.
Entertainment.
Hollywood was blind to what was coming—streaming, social media, influencers replacing studios. But Jason wasn't. He was going to build a content pipeline before Netflix even realized DVDs were obsolete.
He bought the domain streamhub.com for $9.
Then he wrote a mission statement.
> The future isn't cable. The future is instant, global, binge-ready content without borders.
He smiled.
Then circled YouTube's future launch date on his calendar.
2005.
He'd be ready years before them.