While Miami may still be the first Floridian city associated with the cryptocurrency industry, executives are continuing to bet on Tampa Bay's tech scene at an increasingly rapid pace.
The latest: Chicago-based CoinFlip, which will soon move into 8,000 square feet of office space in Sparkman Wharf. It has big plans on deck, including creating 40 jobs in its first year. It will also open a “Crypto Experience Center” that it says will be the first of its kind in the U.S. The center will include one of CoinFlip’s bitcoin ATMs and host educational events for beginners and crypto enthusiasts.
Tampa Bay Inno sat down with CoinFlip's CEO Ben Weiss to learn more about the impact he plans to make in the region and state's burgeoning tech scene. Answers have been edited for length and clarity.
A good place to start would be the choice of Tampa. Especially when Miami has garnered a reputation as a crypto hub in Florida, why choose Tampa?
Tampa just started sticking out to us. And as we did more and more research, we sort of fell in love with it more and more. And what it comes down to is the top-tier tech talent. This is where we're building our engineering hub and then the whole Water Street project and Sparkman Wharf; I mean, let's talk about an area with such great energy and vibrancy. And then the administration in Tampa has been on the cutting edge of blockchain of crypto and has been very supportive and helpful in this process.
With the talent pipeline, are you referring to the existing pipeline coming from our local universities? Or is it more of the growing pipeline with thousands of people moving to the region each month? Your people make your company and nothing is more important than attracting top-tier talent. And we believe Tampa is the place to do it. It's a great place where we're not only committed to the long term, but I think a lot of people move to Tampa and say, 'This is a place where I want to build a life.' Whereas in some other cities like San Francisco, you have people coming and going more often.
Are there any other crypto-focused businesses or individuals that you've been in contact with in Tampa Bay? What has that engagement been like? Celsius is another crypto company that's in town. And a bunch of crypto miners who live in [Water Street]. But at the end of the day, we saw this tech talent here and we saw this tech ecosystem and we wanted to build on top of it. We're looking to build sort of a crypto beach here in Tampa. And there's a lot of tech talent there with Celsius. And I think there's going to be a lot of other companies coming.
A big selling point of CoinFlip is its crypto ATMs — but a large reason crypto initially took off is because people can buy crypto from anywhere in the world. And with Covid-19 making remote services even more ingrained in society, what is the value of having in-person offerings? I started Coin Flip with my co-founders in 2015 because I saw how intimidating it was even for me to purchase crypto. How is someone like my mom ever going to purchase it? So we wanted this physical, tangible concept and that's been our ethos from day one. The crypto experience center at our office in Sparkman Wharf is going to be a way for anyone from the public to learn about crypto, get educated, interact with the kiosk and interact with our trade desk. They could literally sit across the table for one of our representatives at our trade desk. I mean, where else in the country could you buy cryptocurrency and then have a live human being at the other side of the table?
Crypto had a rough few weeks lately. What are your thoughts on what's going on right now with this market volatility? What impact it may it have on public perception of cryptocurrencies and people's willingness to get involved in the market? I'll just tell you, as it relates to CoinFlip, there are a bunch of tech companies laying people off. We're hiring 100-plus people throughout the rest of the year, including 40 in Tampa. So we're not slowing down at all. And I think the legitimate companies and the legitimate projects ... when markets go down, it shows who has a strong company.
So in one year down the road, three years, five years, what will CoinFlip look like in Tampa and what do you hope to accomplish? We hope to have a world-class experience and innovation center and we hope to be a great corporate citizen and member of the community. We hope to continue building on top of our engineering team in Tampa. I hope I have to find more office space in Tampa, to be honest. We've had that in Chicago, where, before the lease is up, we always had to expand into more office space. So I'm hoping the same thing happens in Tampa and we're here to stay for the long term. We're not slowing down at all.
