Brock Pierce

Details

Brock Pierce is an entrepreneur and venture capitalist with an extensive track record of founding, advising, and investing in disruptive businesses. He is credited with pioneering the market for digital currency and has raised more than $5 billion 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). Block.one was created in 2017 and has sold over $4 billion tokens in the EOS crowdsale, making it the largest ever. Blockchain Capital was founded in 2013 and is 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 and was named the most active FinTech Venture Fund by Pitchbook. Tether is the first stable coin 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 $1 billion and investors such as Goldman Sachs, which was sold in 2016 for more than $100 million. 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.

Investments

Name
Round
Valuation
Amount
Date
-- -- $ 15 M
Sep 27, 2017
  • 1
Total 1 Page

Relevance Person

W Bradford Stephens

Brad Stephens is Co-founder and Managing Partner of Blockchain Capital, the premier venture capital fund investing in the blockchain technology sector and the first to raise a venture fund through an ICO. Prior to Blockchain Capital, Brad was Managing Partner of Stephens Investment Management LLC (SIM), which he co-founded in 2002. His diverse background in domestic and international finance includes sell-side securities analysis, hedge fund management, venture capital, and family office management. Prior to co-founding SIM, Brad worked as the senior analyst at Fidelity Ventures, the venture capital arm of Fidelity Investments. At Fidelity, Brad focused on the areas of Internet Security and New Media, leading investments into e-Security, Sanctum, and Managed Objects. He also founded Fidelity's Biometric Consortium, a cutting-edge collaboration of all Fidelity's business units designed to explore, pilot, and implement biometric security systems within Fidelity and eventually its consumer clients. Brad also worked as a research analyst in CSFB's Technology Group, specializing in Internet Security and Internet infrastructure software. While at CSFB, Brad helped raise over $1.3 billion for companies under coverage. Prior to working at CSFB, Brad worked as a research analyst at Furman Selz (later acquired by ING Barings), where he co-founded their Internet Research Group and co-authored the first financial industry piece on Internet Security. Brad holds a B.A. in Economics from Duke University.

Aleks Larsen

Aleks Larsen is a general partner at Blockchain Capital. With a multidisciplinary background, Aleks brings a unique combination of experience in systems engineering, fundamental analysis and capital markets to the firm. Prior to joining Blockchain Capital, Aleks worked as an investment banking analyst at Guggenheim Partners, focusing on mergers & acquisitions and equity financings within the biotechnology sector. Aleks graduated Summa Cum Laude with a B.S. in Systems Engineering from Washington University in St. Louis.

Mothusi Majinda

Mothusi Majinda is the Chief Technology Officer of Bullish and was previously Director of Platform Engineering at BC Group, Assistant Vice President at Credit Suisse, and Analyst at JPMorgan Chase. He holds a bachelor's degree in computer science from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Brendan Blumer

Brendan began building innovative technology companies when he was in high school. After several successful exits-including Gamecliff, an in-game marketplace, and okay.com, Hong Kong's largest digital property agency-Brendan became an early investor in blockchain when he co-founded Block.one. He now serves as the Chairman of Bullish.

Daniel Larimer

Dan Larimer, also known as BM, is a genius programmer and the only creator in the world who has produced three consecutive blockchain products in the top 50 by market capitalization. He graduated from Virginia Tech in 2003 with a bachelor's degree in computer science. His dream has always been to find a free market solution that can guarantee people's lives, freedom, and property security, and make the world a better place. He realized that everything had to start with free currency. In 2013, many Bitcoin exchanges were shut down by the US government, and bank accounts were also seized. At this time, BM began developing the world's first decentralized exchange, Bitshares, and invented bitUSD, a digital currency pegged to the US dollar. In the following two years, Dan systematically solved many of the problems that blockchain technology encountered in application. For example, for the trading speed requirement of 100,000 transactions per second for exchanges, Dan developed the Graphene technology solution. In early 2016, Dan developed the Steem blockchain based on his new understanding and developed the Steemit social media application on this public chain. The DPoS consensus mechanism he proposed is based on the concept of shareholder voting to elect validators, which is used to prevent three to five large mining pools from attacking the network and achieve maximum decentralization. Concerns about the risks of DPoS are actually ignoring greater risks. The lack of unity between token holders and decision-makers is a greater risk for the network. In 2017, at the New York Consensus Conference, BM introduced the ambitious EOS project to the world, with the goal of becoming the operating system of the blockchain industry and being seen as a strong competitor to Ethereum. With parallel computing, millions of TPS, and no transaction fees, EOS contains several important features that, if successful, will make blockchain technology a truly practical technology.

Alan Curtis

Alan Curtis is the CEO at Rio Network, Head of Platform of Blockchain Capital and has previously served as the Chief Technology Officer of Core Scientific and the CEO of RADAR.

Ethan Tong

Ethan Tong is the founder and CEO of KnightSafe, co-founder and chief investment officer of Aspen Digital, and partner of EVG.

Caleb Tebbe

Caleb Tebbe is Principal Research Engineer at Blockchain Capital. Formerly, Chief Technology Officer at Radar, Data Science Software Engineer at Coinbase.

Derek Hsue

Derek Hsue is the Co-Founder at Reverie and formerly an analyst at Blockchain Capital. Before that, he worked in the Private Funds group at Mercury Capital, where he focused on venture capital fund diligence. Derek is an active writer, and has explored various topics including governance, mining, and privacy. He is also a founding member of the Penn Blockchain Club, where he taught an introduction course to cryptocurrencies. Derek attended the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania where he got his B.S. in Economics and Finance.

Anay Simunovic

Anay Simunovic is an investor at Blockchain Capital and was previously the host of DAOn the RabbitHole. She graduated from McGill University in Canada.