Chicago fintech company makes its mark on Tampa with new office and hiring | Business Observer

A Chicago fintech company has opened an innovation center in Tampa as part of its expansion and as a way to demystify what is for many the often incomprehensible world of cryptocurrency.

The company is CoinFlip and the center is part of an 8,000-square-foot space it has taken in Sparkman Wharf in the city’s Water Street Tampa district.

CoinFlip is a fintech company powered by cryptocurrency. In this role, it has approximately 4,000 bitcoin ATMs in the US and Canada where people can buy, sell and access crypto. The Tampa office is the second in the country.

CoinFlip plans to hire 40 employees in Tampa who will focus on engineering and technology. It has already employed around 15 people.

Speaking at an opening ceremony for the new center on September 13, Ben Weiss, the company’s CEO and co-founder, says CoinFlip launched the ATMs in part “because we wanted to take crypto out of the cloud and make it physical. And tangible.

“CoinFlip was started with the mission to buy crypto and be involved in crypto as safe, secure, easy and, most importantly, as accessible as possible for everyone.”

To that end, the new center will be a place where anyone interested in cryptocurrency can come and use the ATMs to buy, sell or create accounts. It will also be a place where anyone at any level of knowledge can come and learn about cryptocurrency as well.

The center will be open from 11am to 8pm daily and will be staffed with on-site crypto guides who can help customers complete transactions at four ATMs.

CoinFlip had revenue of nearly $100 million in 2021 and was ranked in the top 100 on the Inc. 5000 list for the past two years. Crain’s Chicago Business also named it the No. 1 fastest-growing company in Chicago two years in a row.

In addition to the Experience Centre, the company will have workplaces in the office. It will be here that engineers and others will work on developing fintech products for Web3.

According to the Harvard Business Review, the blockchain-based Web 3 is “touted as the future of the Internet.”

“It offers a read/write/own version of the web, where users have an economic stake in and more control over the online communities they belong to. Web3 promises to transform the experience of being online as dramatically as PCs and smartphones did.”

The company has also founded a venture fund to help seed companies working with Web3. As part of this push, it will partner with local innovation hubs to help find startups to work with.

Given its push into the world of Web3, CoinFlip will open an exact replica on a plot of land in the metaverse organized by iamnotArt, a Chicago-based metaverse curator. The digital storefront will allow consumers worldwide to access the Experience Center and use the offers.

Sparkman Wharf is an office and retail development on Water Street, the $3 billion, 56-acre mixed-use development just south of downtown Tampa. The project’s developer, Strategic Property Partners, is a joint venture between investor and Tampa Bay Lightning owner Jeff Vinik and Bill Gates’ Cascade Investment LLC.