The One Platte office building at 1701 Platte St. in Denver in August 2023. (BusinessDen file)

A Castle Rock-based bitcoin mining company fashioned out of a biotech firm has taken office space along Denver’s Platte Street.

Riot Platforms subleased 18,000 square feet in the One Platte building at 1701 Platte St. from Pebl, which previously operated as Velocity Global.

Riot and Pebl didn’t respond to requests for comment on the deal.

The company that is now Riot was founded in 2000 and operated in biotech for years under various names, according to The Denver Post. The company went public in 2003. 

In 2017, however, the company rebranded from Bioptix to Riot Blockchain and went all-in on bitcoin. That change made it the top-performing stock for Colorado-based companies in 2017, according to the Post. Its stock price as of Friday had doubled so far this year but was still lower than its 2017 high.

Riot Blockchain became Riot Platforms in 2023. Riot says it has bitcoin mining operations in Texas and Kentucky and electrical engineering and fabrication operations in Denver and Houston.

Velocity Global, a cloud-based software company, was founded in Denver in 2014 by Ben Wright. It leased the second-floor space in One Platte in 2022 after years in the Industry RiNo Station building. 

The company rebranded to Pebl last month and says on LinkedIn that it is now headquartered in the San Francisco Bay area.

The One Platte building, completed in 2022, was developed by Denver-based Nichols Partnership and San Francisco-based Shorenstein Properties. In July, the two firms sold it to Bet365, the British betting firm that has an office in the building.