There's a mini golf course on Deer Island now. 18 holes, two MLB-sized batting cages, an arcade stocked with high-end pinball machines. It's called Legends Fun Factory, and for a while there, it looked like it might not get finished. 

Genevieve Hennessey, a serial entrepreneur, and her husband spent decades before this running an environmental consulting business together, working with Indigenous communities and municipalities on deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars.  

Her husband had bought land on Deer Island years earlier, before COVID, mostly on a hunch that something was coming and that they'd want somewhere quiet where they could fend for themselves. When they finally moved there full time, they found an island that still felt a little frozen in time, kids on quads, fishing rods instead of phones, and a pace of life that took some getting used to.

They also found an island that was hurting economically. Jobs were scarce and tourism had faded. 

From a Book Launch to a $1.5 Million Build 

The Fun Factory started small, as a way to promote Legends Lost, the book series Genevieve's husband encouraged her to write. Around the same time, the couple pitched in on the scenic lookout at Deer Island Point, a small gift back to the community. 

Once they floated the Fun Factory idea to the island's longtime families and got a genuinely warm reaction, they broke ground. 

First thing they built wasn't even the golf course. It was a house, because decent housing on the island is nearly impossible to come by. 

Then nine holes became eighteen. Then batting cages showed up and then a pinball arcade, clubhouse and a space for birthday parties, mostly because contractors kept showing up looking for work and the project just kept growing to meet them. 

By the time construction wrapped, Legends Fun Factory had become a roughly $1.5 million build, done in under eight months, November 2025 to June 2026. Doors officially opened on July 1st, and people have been driving in ever since, from as far as Tennessee and Georgia, plus a steady stream of tourists crossing over from Lubec and Eastport, Maine. 
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Running Out of Runway 

A build like that isn't cheap and about three quarters of the way through it, the money ran out faster than anyone expected. 

Genevieve's line of credit was maxed out and so was her husband's. Invoices were coming due and a traditional bank wasn't going to help. 

She'd been down that road before. 

Years earlier, trying to refinance her own home, a bank told her she was a high-risk borrower. Self-employed, divorced, raising three kids alone, even with a strong credit score and solid income, she was still considered a high risk borrower. 

"They weren't judging me on my credit score. They were judging me on what they knew about me growing up in a small town." 

That stuck with her. So, when the Fun Factory needed cash and needed it fast, she didn't call a bank. She'd been quietly following Bitcoin for a while by then and something about that world felt different to her: nobody judged her about her marital status or her gender. It was just the facts that mattered. 

She tried a different Bitcoin lender at first; one she'd heard about through an online influencer but that fell apart within a few weeks. She was ready to write the whole idea off and then she found APX and got on a call with Andrei Poliakov, CEO of APX Lending, who walked her through the whole process. 

"What you said on your website and what Andrei said was exactly how it happened. The time frame was exactly how it was going to roll out. Everything happened as instructed." 

The loan against her Bitcoin was in her account within 24 hours and covered what her cash flow couldn't. It got the Fun Factory over the finish line, doors opened and the business flourished. Without it, according to Genevieve, construction would have dragged on for years and that is if it ever got done at all. 

Open Doors, Real Jobs 

Since opening on July 1st, Legends Fun Factory has brought in over 3000 visitors, on an island that had never really had a reason for people to stop before. Legends Fun Factory opened its first year with 20 construction jobs, 4 full-time jobs and 8 seasonal ones, on an island where jobs of any kind aren't easy to find.  They have also donated over $100,000 to the community-owned park on the island, last year.

Genevieve expects that number to double as the business scales into next season. There wasn't time to build a marketing plan during construction, but there is now, and early data from Google and Meta is already shaping where they spend their advertising budget. The goal for next season is simple: double the seasonal staff, double last year's revenue. 

The bigger story here is what it means for New Brunswick as a whole. Deer Island had no real tourism draw before this. Now it's pulling in visitors from Tennessee, Georgia and across the border from Maine, people who wouldn't have had a reason to come otherwise. That's an impactful increase in economic activity for the province and a new tourism avenue in a corner of New Brunswick that's historically been overlooked. 

What comes next includes more holes on the untouched third of the property and a longer-term plan to build a greenhouse on the island. That one isn't really about the revenue at all.

It's about keeping the kitchen running through the off-season for elderly islanders who don't want to leave home but don't have much food support nearby, and doing something about grocery prices that, in her words, have gotten out of hand. 

All future profits are already earmarked for the community, donations to local churches, not-for-profits, groups like the Boys and Girls Club, plus a standing allocation into Bitcoin that goes straight into her APX account instead of a personal wallet. She'd rather trust a regulated company with institutional custody than manage her own keys. 

Why She Keeps Coming Back to APX Lending

‍She has no plans to sell the Bitcoin backing her loan. If anything, she wants to keep borrowing against it as it grows, treating it the way people with real assets usually do, as something you can put to work without cashing it out.
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"Selling it would've meant a big tax bill, right when I needed the cash the most. Borrowing against it lets me keep the asset and still get access to what I needed."

‍Part of what made the difference, for her, was knowing exactly what was happening with her Bitcoin while the loan was in place. APX doesn't lend out or rehypothecate client collateral, so her Bitcoin sat where it was supposed to sit the whole time and the process itself moved fast enough to be useful.

‍"It wasn't complicated. No back and forth, no chasing down paperwork. My Bitcoin stayed put the whole time, nobody was doing anything with it behind the scenes, and I had the money I needed within days, not weeks."

The Bigger Picture

Genevieve's been doing some version of this for a while now, the Legends Lost Lookout, the Deer Island Comedy Fest she started and now the Fun Factory.

Building community with ideas that give people a reason to show up, hang around and talk to each other.

That's really what this is about for her. Getting back some of what she thinks a lot of communities lost after COVID, neighbors talking to neighbors, kids off their phones for an afternoon, strangers cheering each other on over a hole-in-one.

One of her three kids has already moved to the island to learn the business, with an eye toward running it herself one day.

"None of it could have happened on the timeline it needed to, without a lender that didn't make me prove myself first. Thank you APX"

That's the part APX is proud to have played here: not just financing but showing up when it mattered, so a place like Legends Fun Factory could open its doors on schedule instead of stalling out. We're glad we could be part of making it happen.

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