1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Brock Pierce of Blockchain Capital (Part 1)

Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Brock Pierce was recorded in September 2018.

Brock Pierce, Co-Founder of Blockchain Capital, discusses his worldview of the Blockchain investment opportunity. Brock is one of the pioneers of investing in Blockchain companies.

Sramana Mitra: Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your various activities. I know you’re an expert in Bitcoin, crypto, and Blockchain. You invest outside of those segments as well. Give us an overview of what you are up to.

Brock Pierce: I do lots of things. I’m a fan of innovation. I’m a believer in change and like to support those change agents or people who see opportunities to do things differently. I like to support those people that are saying, “I see a way to do something better than it has been done.” I like to put fuel on that fire.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with Unicorn Ventures. What is the investment thesis of the fund? How big is the fund?

Brock Pierce: Unicorn Ventures is my family office with my wife who happens to be pregnant. This is our personal investment. James Santos administers most of it along with the rest of my personal team. This is predominantly a vehicle investing in cryptocurrency-related projects or Blockchain-related endeavours.

We also invest in a handful of interesting technology projects. I’ve founded four funds directly and I’ve been involved in the creation of a dozen others. More recently, I helped launch ELCC, which is the biggest limited partner in Blockchain. We’ve allocated a billion dollars into Blockchain funds.

Sramana Mitra: I would like to focus our discussion primarily on your Blockchain investments. More importantly, your Blockchain investment thesis. Let’s start there. Give us an idea about how you are looking at the Blockchain world as an investor.

Brock Pierce: I’m a global macro-thinker and investor. The internet has impacted every business on the planet and all of our lives. Blockchain is probably going to have about 10 times the impact that the internet has. To put it simply, the internet of information, as we think of it, has changed the way that data moves.

The problem is the internet is broken. The internet is going to go away as we know it. It’s going to be upgraded. When the internet was first being designed, the security technology needed to make the internet secure was known, but the computer processors at that time were not capable of implementing the cryptography. It was unsecure not by a lack of knowledge but due to a lack of hardware at that time.

By the time that the hardware had caught up with the known cryptography, too much had been developed. The early builders of the internet said, “We’re too far along. Too many things have been built. We’re just going to have to go without security.” The internet was built on sand. It wasn’t built using a solid foundation. The Blockchain does a bunch of things but most importantly, it is a security layer.

The internet is going to be upgraded using the security or the cryptography that enables the Blockchain. Every website and every business that’s built on the internet is going to be upgraded or go away. When you start to understand how big the change that is coming is, you’ll recognize that this is the only place you should be investing.

This segment is part 1 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Brock Pierce of Blockchain Capital
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