Nick Jackson's most interesting customer, he told the room at Mining Disrupt Miami 2022, runs a worm farm. The miners heat the worms, the worms make compost, and the compost grows vegetables. Jackson, founder of Blokforge, used the example to make a broader case: the businesses that get the most out of Bitcoin mining are often ones that already exist, with tax bills, power contracts and heating costs that miners can be fitted into.
The session was recorded at Mining Disrupt Miami 2022, held July 26–28, 2022, when Bitcoin traded at $22,964. On October 15, 2026, it trades at $80,900. The company details below are as Jackson described them in July 2022.
From Parts Manufacturing to Miner Distribution
Blokforge's parent company was started in 2003, Jackson said, manufacturing parts for OEM automobile aftermarket, Department of Defense and aerospace customers. Around 2016, a friend who played World of Warcraft brought up Bitcoin. Jackson started looking at the hardware and found a way to plug it into the company's existing infrastructure: warehouses in Hong Kong, Europe and the United States, plus a transportation network and distribution channels already in place. The company began distributing for one of the bigger miner manufacturers and grew from there.
The session opened with a company video. It described a 100,000-square-foot warehouse in Arizona, an official distributorship for Canaan, miner buyback, technicians with over 5 megawatts of power to test, clean and repair equipment, and plans to expand into Europe after the company acquired Crypto Universe.
Jackson said Blokforge started in retail rather than brokerage, which he described as the main difference from many competitors. The company also brokers, but its main concentration is warehousing and selling equipment. Relocation became a large service after mining conditions in China changed: overseas customers whose U.S. facilities were not ready would ship equipment to Blokforge, which would palletize it, go through it, re-box it and drop-ship it to their sites. He called it a service nobody offered at the time. Repair and maintenance, resale on a customer's behalf and an escrow-style service, in which Blokforge inspects and approves a unit before the parties pay each other, round out the list.
Section 179 and the Ice Cream Shop
Many of Blokforge's customers, Jackson said, are mid-sized businesses with between one and five million dollars and an existing operation. They range from farms and ice cream shops to grow operations and retail stores.
we had an ice cream shop for example that actually had a massive year a lot of profit a lot of revenue looking for ways to offset
Nick Jackson · 4:05
The shop learned that it could buy miners and depreciate them under Section 179 of the U.S. tax code. Jackson said such buyers can either fully depreciate the equipment or spread it over five years. In his view, owners of existing businesses often miss how much this can matter once mining is tied into the business. He estimated that the tax savings lower mining costs by up to 33 percent or more in some cases; he did not break the figure down on stage.
Mining Under the Peak Demand Charge
A second group of customers manufactures large steel beams. Jackson pointed to a cost many people overlook: electricity is billed not only by the kilowatt-hour but also through a peak demand charge.
whether it runs for five minutes or whether it runs every minute of the month
Nick Jackson · 5:07
Once a plant fires up its machines, he said, it gets a $2,500 to $3,000 bill on the peak demand alone. Many states offer manufacturers lower rates. These customers add miners while keeping total load below their peak demand, and they do not run the miners during the four to eight hours a day the plant's own machine is running. For them, Jackson said, that lowers the cost to mine by at least forty percent.
Heat, Publicity and the Worm Farm
Businesses that need heat were, for Jackson, the obvious fit. Grow operations attach a container to the building and plumb the heat in. Because they were already paying to heat the space, the miners' heat is essentially free for them, and the units generate enough BTUs to offset the heaters they had. Warehouses on the northern East Coast, which pay to keep staff warm all winter, plumb miners in just below the roof and scatter them through the building. He said this is extremely stable, easier than adjusting thermostats, and pretty much pays for itself.
Publicity is another reason. He recalled the Long Island Blockchain episode, in which a company drew wide attention just by attaching the word to its name, and said a small brewery downtown that starts mining gets a similar lift over its competitors. Farms make up another group: seven or eight customers with cow farms, plus livestock and chicken farms, put spare electricity they are not using to work. Then there is the worm farm.
he'll use the miners to heat to go to the worms to the compost use the compost to grow the vegetables
Nick Jackson · 6:47
Trust, Location and a Node in the Shop
Asked why customers choose Blokforge, Jackson listed security, with a 100,000-square-foot facility on four acres in downtown Mesa, Arizona; accessibility, with customers able to visit their equipment, plus video feeds and inventory reports; and trust, which he said takes time to build. The company has been in business since 2016. He estimated that about 80 percent of the people in the business were lost in the first crypto winter, and said Blokforge was one of the few doing what it does that made it through.
Being a U.S. entity matters too, he said, because some customers, including companies that may be public, need to keep funds within the country. Blokforge also used to sell nodes, setting up a customer's miner, node and payment server so a shop could take payments and run its own setup. He said there was little profit in it for Blokforge, but it was cool to have a shop that could go off the grid and run its own ecosystem.
Questions From the Floor
One question was about the minimum size of business that makes the investment worthwhile. Jackson said customers start with one machine and range from the smallest businesses up to about 10 million dollars. He gave the example of a computer repair and data storage business in a large building that pays a flat rate for its electricity and wanted to add miners without going over that rate, using capacity it already pays for.
Asked about his ideal customer, Jackson described someone just getting into mining, the way everyone was about five years earlier. He said he prefers people using their own money, because they are more careful with it, over operators spending other people's money.
we love the guys that are doing it themselves and we do everything we can to help them thrive and grow
Nick Jackson · 11:45
The last question was about people who discourage individuals from mining at small scale. Jackson said he did not know why anyone would: when capitulation comes, he said, the big operators feel it and the small ones keep going.