Brock Pierce: Bringing A Message Of Unity To A Divided Nation
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With everything that is happening, 2020 is a year where anyone thinking about running for president would think twice. Not Brock Pierce, an independent candidate for the US presidency. A young, wealthy entrepreneur in the blockchain and cryptocurrency world, Brock stands in stark contrast to the older, more entrenched players of the established duopoly. Bringing forth a message of unity and systematic change, he directly challenges the two-party system that he believes has held America back from truly progressing as one nation. A systems genius who has made a difference in the technology world, Brock believes that America needs to upgrade its very operating system. Listen in as he introduces his platform on the show with Patrick Donohoe.
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Brock Pierce: Bringing A Message Of Unity To A Divided Nation
Thank you for tuning in to a special episode of the show. I got to sit down with Brock Pierce. He is one of the candidates for the US presidency. There are more than two candidates. Brock can be found at Brock.vote. It has a great explanation of his political platform as well as his social media channel links. Brock and I met when he was here in Salt Lake City, which is where I’m located. He was kicking off his bus tour amongst other things, and it was a great conversation. You are going to enjoy the interview.
You may have heard his name before. He was a child movie star. He was in The Mighty Ducks. He is also known in the blockchain and cryptocurrency world. He is the Director of the Bitcoin Foundation as well as the Cofounder of Tether. 2020 is a year where anyone thinking about running for president would think twice. It seems like everything that has happened has been weaponized politically and the two parties are shooting at one another.
The American public is in the cross crossfire. At the same time, now is potentially a time where we can wake up to a different message and start to question our assumptions. Maybe Brock is the guy to do that. He’s young, wealthy, and he has made a difference in the technology world. I believe he has a good message. Thank you for your support. I appreciate it.
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Brock, it’s awesome to be with you. Thanks for taking the time. I know you are a busy man.
My hands are full. Running for president is more than a full-time job and I had a few jobs before this.
Did you realize that going in or are a lot of things surprised you since you made that decision?
Love is the answer. Unity is the answer. Share on XI understood that running for the presidency is like stepping into the ring of fire. You are calling in the magnifying glass to have every decision you’ve ever made in your life scrutinized and demanding in terms of meetings day and night interviews, answering questions. That’s what you were signing up for is not sleeping much and working on it.
2020 is like a ring of fire on the sun as opposed to other elections.
This one is especially divisive, but it feels like just as a trend, as a nation where we’ve been moving in this. It doesn’t feel like it started. This feels like it’s been accelerating or amplifying throughout the course of my life, but we don’t feel like the United States right now. It feels like the divided states, whether that be politically, economically and racially divided. Simultaneously facing existential threats, environmentally, technologically, conflict and challenges with China. There’s a lot going on.
This is trying times, the vitriol is off the charts and you stepped into the ring. Why don’t you tell the audience about what compelled you to run? What message do you want to communicate to not just the United States, but to the world?
I can summarize why I’m running for office in one word, love. At a time where it feels like our choices are fear and hate. I love this country. I love the American people. I believe in us. I have faith in us and love is the answer. Unity is the answer. We have to find a path forward together. We have to have compassion. We have to be patient. We have to have the understanding and right now, we’re in this path of this two-party system that either comes into collision or full polarization. We are polarized as a nation that we have to find a way back to unity. Hopefully by putting love on the table as one of the choices, we can figure this out together.
You probably have a different perspective now but it’s interesting to try to observe 2020 and you use the word divisive. It’s grown. That chasm is big now. It’s not necessarily people being for something and for something else. It’s being against. There’s a lot of against and not much for. It’s interesting to hear what you are for which I do believe is something that can bring people together. What’s your experience on the road been? What it’s been like? I know you’re about to kick off your bus tour around the country, starting in Salt Lake City, our home base. With the people you’ve interacted with and the pulse that you’re getting, where do you start to have that conversation?
I’m not running against anyone. I’m running for and with everyone. We are in Salt Lake City. I’m in Utah. The experience has been interesting. The message that we share or the message that I communicate seems to resonate with people that are for this and everything in between. The issue for us is whether or not the message resonates and people are into it and agree with it. Our issue has been in reach and trying to get the message out. The political system is rigged. It’s rigged to protect and preserve the duopoly, red and blue, and anyone that’s trying to present an alternative is essentially shut down and preventing for me to being on ballots and things.
It’s a wild ride and I can explain it from the inside. There’s that challenge the media similarly doesn’t want to present anything that isn’t the two-party system, the debate stages the same way. The debates historically were run by the League of Women Voters, but after the League of Women Voters allowed Ross Perot to participate in the debates, they stripped that privilege away and handed it to one Republican and one Democrat to ensure that no third party would ever make it onto that stage again.
Talk about the different demographics that exist. The Millennial generation is now coming to its own professionally graduating college and they don’t necessarily have the decades behind them that have influenced taking this side or that side even though there’s compelling influence to take aside. What role does the youth have now? How do you feel you can better connect to them than the presidents that represent those two dominant parties?
That’s where our message resonates most. We pull best in the sub-40-year-old category. Whatever happens in this election, this is the beginning. We are laying the groundwork for the future as well as doing everything that must be done for this election cycle. What I would tell the youth is they are the sleeping giant in this country. When the youth wake up and realize how much their voice matters and counts, we can change everything. Forty-three percent of eligible voters in this country are not voting. Over 30% of registered voters are independents, meaning that we are already the majority.
The Republican and Democratic parties are the minority, but we’ve been tricked. We’ve been confused. We’ve been living in the solution that our only choices are red and blue. The question is when will we wake up and bring the necessary change? As Albert Einstein is often quoted as saying, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.” When are we going to do something different?
What have you seen with the youth that is giving you hope? There is influence and the influence starts within the school system where kids are taught facts, not necessarily how to debate them or how to critically think. They have also been influenced and it depends on the state but it has caused them to start taking sides. As they listen to social media, which is a huge influence in their life, they can take sides as well. What’s your advice or what’s your message to them that allows them to maybe pierce the veil of having to choose sides and be able to step outside of that and understand facts, truth and whatever the opposite of rhetoric is?
The youth are the country’s sleeping giant. When they realize how much their voice matters, they can change everything. Share on XUnfortunately, we have to unlearn so much of what we’ve learned because history or his story was written by the victors and it’s not always accurate. A lot of those facts are not necessarily facts. What I would encourage everyone regardless of your age is to vote your conscience to trust and follow your heart. Do what you feel is right for you. I would avoid making compromises because compromises around our system of governance, that thing that governs over us does not lead to good things. We hold our family, friends and co-workers to a certain bar of truth. If people lie to you, you stop hanging out with them. If people cheat, you normally stop working with them. For some reason, they don’t have to abide by those same principles and rules that we apply to everyone else. We have to start holding our government accountable to our values and principles and stop compromising.
One more question that I love to pivot a little bit into your professional area of expertise is it seems like people are forced to take sides and there’s a leverage of group psychology that if you’re not with us, you’re against us. What do you say to that especially when it comes to youth? Youth in large part is still gaining a lot of self-esteem and self-awareness based on the groups that they associated with. Not being a part of the group often is highly influential which has them make decisions about political issues as opposed to forming their own opinions and perspective. What message do you have for those that may sit on the line and may not like the side of the cards that they’re dealt, but nonetheless, their group, their influence, their family in some cases, their community, is going to outcast them if they even don’t take their side?
In the long run in life, you eventually have to free your mind and break free from the control and manipulation of others to hear what people have to say to process that information but to ultimately think for yourself. Don’t let others tell you what to do. Don’t let others tell you what to think. Make sure in life that you do you whether you realize it now or later in life, that is when success begins for you. You’re taught in school to conform but what you learn as you become successful in life is that conforming is what prevents success. You have to step out of conformity and become the individual. The independent being that you are and to make your own decisions.
Some will learn that sooner, some will learn that later, but the sooner you learn that normally the better off your life will be. As you get better, as your life improves so will the world around us. You only have the power to change yourself, but through the bettering of yourself, you have the ability to inspire and influence others to better themselves. Be the change you wish to see in the world. Try not to succumb to the fear and hate, it’s me against you. We’re all one. We’re ultimately in this together and to have compassion and to be patient and try to understand where someone’s coming from and why they have a different perspective. To agree to disagree but understand we’re not against each other.
It seems like this might be a pivot, but I think there is some relevance to your area of specialty as a professional, which is a blockchain. I know you’ve had an extensive background there and you can look to the blockchain. Sometimes, I like to look at it as an arbiter of truth to understand what is fair. It’s not just in the political arena. It’s in the financial arena. It’s everywhere where you have interested parties that stack the deck in their favor that may give some truth and hide maybe what would make a person side the other way.
Blockchain in a sense has the future of being able to help us to know what is right and have more facts objectively as opposed to subjectively. With the perspective you have with that background, how do you view whether it’s our political system, whether it’s our monetary system? How do you view it differently than most? What type of message do you want to communicate as far as how that technology could ultimately improve things?
Antitrust and trust with truth is an important thing. Blockchain should enable a world that is more trustworthy. Absolute power corrupts absolutely which is why we created antitrust laws. Our government recognized systems of two. Most of our world is run by monopolies and those things that we know over time, we can’t trust. The blockchain hopefully brings and restores trust to systems by creating transparency, accountability and all the wonderful things that hopefully create a more inclusive, and fair world.
A lot of it’s relevant to what’s going on. For example, one of the things that I started was the digital dollar, tokenizing and creating this concept of a stable coin and that system right now, our UST is doing $10 trillion a year in transactional volume. Governments around the world have recognized that technology can be used to enhance their currency at a central banking level. The Chinese government has created the Chinese digital one-off of that framework.
This stuff is becoming relevant which is another reason why we need visionary leadership in our government that understands technology. We’ve seen how social networking has impacted our democracy. If you haven’t seen The Social Dilemma on Netflix, it’s a movie worth watching. Brittany Kaiser is my campaign manager. Also, check out The Great Hack. These are things that are relevant right now as we are in the final month or so of the election. Technology matters, which is why we need leadership with foresight that understands how to navigate the road ahead because technology is moral.
Technology is a tool. How we use it is what matters. With artificial intelligence coming online, robotics, automation, the landscape of work, the world around us is changing and we need leadership with our fingers on the pulse. When you watch our tech giants testified before our government, it’s embarrassing to see the quality of questions that are being asked. Our government does not understand how the world is changing right now and it’s accelerating. It’s changing rapidly that the decisions we make over the course of the next decade will not only determine the fate of our nation but the fate of humanity.
The world has progressed quickly. As you get up in age and you come to a certain perspective and paradigm of the world, it’s difficult sometimes to accept new information and hold new information. You look at the leadership, not just in our government, but leadership in business and religious leadership. They’re all in that same demographic. Things are happening quickly and they’re not able to pivot and make decisions that would otherwise benefit people simply for the lack of knowledge.
Blockchain is one of those things where it’s been a buzzword but it’s gaining more popularity. Those two documentaries, I could not emphasize. I’ve talked about them before on the show, but sometimes information goes in one ear and out the other. Hopefully, this year 2020 specifically can demonstrate how social media, how rhetoric has been weaponized and how much it is negatively impacted things including everybody’s lives. Hopefully, there’s an awakening of sorts.
Conformity is what prevents success. Share on XSometimes in order to accept another truth, there has to be some pain associated with it. Maybe a punch in the face to have a wakeup call so that you’re open to new ideas and not just sticking to what you’ve always known. Brock, thank you for sharing this. It’s a great message. It’s an inspiring message. I hope that more people will follow you and more people open their eyes because of you. Are there any last words you’d like to say or anything that we haven’t talked about that you think would be important to attend with?
First of all, if you want to learn more, join us at Brock.vote. I’ll close also on some trick game-changing ideas because I’m a systems designer. I understand the power of incentivization. If we want to upgrade the operating system of the United States of America, we need to take a step back and take a look at what are we incentivizing. What is our goal? What is our vision? What is the destination for this nation? What are we aiming for?
Historically, we measured our success by growth. The problem with growth is it assumes infinite resources which we’ve known for some time we don’t have. Therefore, lots of conflicts are occurring between us as we’re trying to take from each other’s pockets. The other problem with growth is it doesn’t differentiate between positive and negative. Cancer creates growth. Locking people in prison creates growth.
Forest fires and hurricanes create growth. What kind of growth do we want to incentivize and the pursuit of happiness? What if we started to measure our success as a nation by life expectancy? What if we started to measure our success by freedom? We’re supposed to be the land of the free. What if we started to measure our success by happiness? I’d like us to start thinking about how do we create America 2.0. How do we shift the gears to bring us to a place in the year 2030 and the America that we all want to live in, a redefined America?
One where the American dream is flourishing. One where we are the light of the world and the bastion of hope that we were always intended to be. One where we are unified, united, aligned and figuring out how to support each other and love thy neighbor’s instead of being in conflict. All these things are possible if we set our minds to it. The last thing, if you are in Wyoming or interested, the Independent National Convention is going to be October 23rd and 24th of 2020 in Cheyenne bringing together the third parties and having our debates and all of those things. I would encourage you to join us online or in-person. If you’re along the campaign trail, I’m in Utah and next up is Idaho, then Wyoming, then Colorado. Send us a tweet. Hit us on Instagram. We’re interested in connecting with every one of you. Thank you for tuning in. I appreciate you having me on the show. God bless.
Thank you, Brock. We wish you the best. Let’s connect again. If you ever need anything, let me know. I think your message is inspiring. I believe this is the year of any, where it’s a wakeup call so that people will listen and take some action. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for your time and best of luck.
Important Links:
- League of Women Voters
- Instagram – Brock Pierce
- www.Brock.vote
- www.BitcoinFoundation.org
- www.Blockchain.capital
- www.Tether.to
- www.EOS.io
About Brock Pierce
Brock Pierce is an entrepreneur and venture capitalist with an extensive track record of founding, advising and investing in disruptive businesses. He’s credited with pioneering the market for digital currency and has raised more than $5B for companies he has founded. Pierce is the Chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation and co-founder of EOS Alliance, Block.one, Blockchain Capital, Tether, and Mastercoin (first ICO).
In 2017, Pierce co-founded Block.one which sold over $4B tokens in the EOS crowdsale, making it the largest ever. He also co-founded Blockchain Capital in 2013, making it the first sector-focused venture fund that invests solely in Blockchain technology companies. Pierce led the firm through the first ICO of a venture fund, which created the first security token. Blockchain Capital has made more than 100 investments in the sector across its four funds. The firm was named the most active FinTech Venture Fund by Pitchbook. In 2014, Brock founded Tether, the first stablecoin and asset-backed token.
Pierce is an early investor in Bitcoin and one of the largest investors in the Ethereum crowdsale. He is the founder of IMI Exchange, the world’s leading digital currency marketplace for games, with annual sales exceeding $1B and investors such as Goldman Sachs, which was sold in 2016 for more than $100M. Pierce founded ZAM, one of the world’s largest media properties for gamers, which was acquired by Tencent in 2012. He founded IGE, the pioneer of digital currency in online games, achieving revenues exceeding $100 million in 2006 and sold in 2007. Pierce is also a co-founder of D10e, GoCoin, Blade Payments, Five Delta (sold NASDAQ: SRAX), Xfire 2.0, Playsino, Evertune, GamesTV, and DEN. He also advises Airswap, Bancor, BitGo, BitGuild, BlockV, Bloq, DNA, Element Group, Metronome, Shyft, and tZERO.
Pierce is a sought-after speaker who has spoken about the power of blockchain technology and decentralization at global events and institutions.
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