When entrepreneurs tell their stories, many of them say that starting a business was always their dream or in their blood—that they never wanted to work for anyone else. They often name these motivations as their driving force toward success, pushing them to overcome any challenges they face.
However, Rufus J. Wright, founder and CEO of GPU mining hosting company Crypto Caverns, tells a different story. He was a reluctant entrepreneur who never dreamed of having his own business. Yet somehow he ended up founding a BBB-accredited firm within the crypto mining industry, demonstrating that there’s no single starting point in the journey toward success.
“I’ve always liked the idea of working at other firms,” Wright says. “I saw myself as an ‘intrapreneur’ or someone who would come into other firms and develop new things and new processes and innovate within existing systems.”
Having dropped out of college, Wright was an options trader, but that came to an end during the global financial crisis. He went back to school and finished his degree in finance, discovering a passion for fixed income and risk management. Seeing an opportunity on the other side of the world, Wright moved to China to earn his master’s degree in management science at Xi’an Jiaotong University, one of the nation’s top universities. After finishing this degree, he became chief risk management officer at an investment company in China, heading a team of over 300 people.
Wright later decided to return to the U.S., where he saw the opportunity in GPU mining. However, he couldn’t find the right solutions to fit what he needed, pushing him to create his own. This gap is what led him to establish Crypto Caverns in 2017.
Wright was up to the challenge as someone who has had a strong interest in computers and assembled computer rigs since his youth—thanks to his mother, who had been a programmer.
“I studied the market and found that the risk profile of GPU mining at the time was amazing, so I built my first facility,” Wright says. “I started with just one computer that I tore apart to maximize the number of GPUs that it could handle in my living room in Manhattan.”
Crypto Caverns eventually expanded into multiple new international facilities in Canada, China and Kazakhstan. It was then that Wright’s risk management background came in handy, as he was able to anticipate the risks of other countries banning crypto mining. In 2022, Crypto Caverns moved all its equipment back to the U.S. and hired multiple team members based domestically.
According to Wright, he has been incredibly hands-on with Crypto Caverns, especially on the equipment side, given his passion for building computers. He has personally assembled most of the company’s servers and personally oversaw the construction of their data centers.
Wright says he’s not afraid of getting his hands dirty and likes doing things, such as yard work and fixing his car, himself. He credits this mentality for giving him a perspective different from many entrepreneurs and executives.
“Many businesspeople have MBA degrees but don’t have much life experience or hands-on skills in their industries. They’re good at learning things very quickly, and they learn everything they can from the books,” Wright adds. “But they don’t have that intimate hands-on experience and familiarity with the job. I believe that there’s a certain kind of expertise that you can only get from being in an industry and working in it with your own hands.”
With the boom of artificial intelligence, Wright believes Crypto Caverns is well-positioned to take advantage of the huge opportunities presented by the technology. According to the founder, GPUs are the workhorses that provide the computing power needed for AI, and the skills he and his team have learned with cryptocurrency are easily transferable to AI. Wright says computing power will be the oil of a new era, so his company is seeking to standardize that product for the long term, making it more accessible, reliable and frictionless.
