Photo: Bit5ive
“We have a lot of exciting times coming,” Collazo says “The biggest challenge is for us to create more affordable and efficient infrastructure. We would like to be the leaders when it comes to that part of the business.”
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2023 Economic Outlook
Miami-based crypto mining company Bit5ive looks beyond chaotic year for the industry
Robert Collazo Jr. started off in the crypto mining industry eight years ago, establishing the first Florida site to mine digital currency in Doral. Since then, his company Bit5ive has grown to become one of the largest manufacturers of cryptocurrency mining equipment in the world. deploying modular data centers that house the computer networks at the heart of digital currency and Blockchain transactions.
Crypto might be in chaos this year and Miami’s efforts to become a crypto capital are dented in the process, but companies developing data centers and management systems behind the digital currency movement continues to advance, Collazo says. The company – which emphasizes its efforts to establish crypto infrastructure in areas where it can connect to clean energy sources, thus lessening its environmental impact of crypto mining – plans to go public in 2023 and it has new technologies on the horizon.
“We have a lot of exciting times coming,” Collazo says “The biggest challenge is for us to create more affordable and efficient infrastructure. We would like to be the leaders when it comes to that part of the business.”
Collazo was working in Miami’s hospitality industry when he took a hobbyist’s interest in crypto currency after first learning about Bitcoin and blockchain technology more than a decade ago. He took the entrepreneurial risk to establish a company that provides the infrastructure for digital currency, working with larger, established firms wanting to break into mining and looking for “100% turn-key” equipment installed in shipping containers for easier transport and installation. The company employs about 100 at its South Florida manufacturing facility.
“The best way to describe it is first of all we are an infrastructure company,” he says. “We do everything from A to Z. We identify the power purchase agreements, identify the land, negotiate the government, build out the land, bring in our modular solutions and once the deployment is 100 percent, we role it into a management contract.”
Collazo chalks up crypto’s awful 2022 – which saw plummeting values and the meltdown of crypto exchange company FTX, leaving a mark on Miami with its unfulfilled naming rights deal for the public arena while the city’s own digital currency, Miami Coin, is near worthless. Crypto currencies lost more than $2 trillion in market value over the past year, according to an analysis from crypto data firm CoinGeko.
But Collazo remains optimistic the underlying technology eventually will continue to be in demand.
“It’s the growing pains of being in a new industry,” Collazo says. “I’ve seen about four cycles. We’re in a global recession, the economy of Earth is not at its greatest. We’ve had a lot of negative stuff going on in the industry and Bitcoin is where it’s at. But it shows some sustainability. There’s a better environment to come.”
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