Brock Pierce
Brock Pierce (born November 14, 1981) is an American entrepreneur known for his work in the cryptocurrency industry. Also, he was a former child actor who appeared in several famous Disney movies
At the age of 16, Pierce gave up acting and joined Marc Collins-Rector and Chad Schackley at Digital Entertainment Network (DEN), where they raised $88 million in venture funding. The objective of DEN was to distribute unique episodic video material to specialized audiences online. However, the business was accused of sexual assault by Collins-Rector, leading to a bankruptcy filing in 2000.
Pierce established Internet Gaming Entertainment (IGE) in 2001, setting the stage for the MMORPG currency-selling services sector. IGE purchased seven smaller rivals for more than $25 million, including four auction platforms and a number of fan and content websites. The business controlled around 50% of this $500 million per year online market in the United States.
Pierce later co-founded venture capital firm Blockchain Capital (BCC) in 2013 with his brothers. BCC raised $85 million in two venture funds by October 2017 and raised a third fund using a digital security offering on the blockchain, one of the first traded security tokens. He worked with Mastercoin, a startup that raised capital via an initial coin offering (ICO) in 2013, which "kicked off a worldwide ICO craze, with hundreds of startups raising billions of dollars", according to Bloomberg.
Pierce and a group of investors submitted a purchase proposal for Mt. Gox's assets in March 2014 using a Cypriot company called Sunlot Holdings Ltd. In May 2014, Pierce was chosen as a Director of the Bitcoin Foundation, however, several members later left due to dissatisfaction with the directors. Along with Reeve Collins and Craig Sellars, Pierce co-founded the cryptocurrency Tether in 2014. Tether surpassed Bitcoin in trading volume, becoming the cryptocurrency with the highest daily and monthly trading volume in 2019. Tether is a stablecoin because it allegedly maintains $1 dollar in reserves for each tether issued. However, in 2020, a court permitted the Attorney General of New York to pursue a claim that Bitfinex, an affiliated exchange, did not disclose the loss of commingled funds.
The ICO raised over $4 billion, the largest in history. By March 2018, Pierce's role at Block.one had changed to chief strategy officer, and he resigned from the company that month to pursue community building. Pierce led an international delegation to El Salvador in June 2021 to advise the Salvadorian government on its formal adoption of Bitcoin as their national currency. In 2020, Pierce ran as an independent candidate in the 2020 United States presidential election.
