Tonight at the Blockchain Unbound welcome party, I happened to hear (via @quinneaker) about a group of people heading to Brock Pierce's place for a party. @corinnestokes, @sean-king, @steemed-open, and I were hanging out and thought, "Eh? Why not? Let's go check it out."
His place is pretty amazing, and it was a packed party with all kinds of really interesting people. Brock gave a little speech which I was able to capture on my phone and wanted to share with you all. This was recorded Wednesday night, March 14th, 2018:
My favorite part:
"We're not here to judge the past. We're here to learn from it. We're here to be solution oriented and build the future in the present."
In case you didn't know, Last Week Tonight recently aired what some people describe as a hit piece on EOS and, specifically, Brock Pierce. EOS recently let Brock go as you can read in this official announcement:
Brock Pierce was an early advisor to Block.one for several months and made significant contributions to the awareness of the EOSIO project. His past experience working with projects such as Ethereum, Blockchain Capital, and as chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation have proved immensely valuable. As we mentioned last week, we recently came to a mutual agreement that Brock would end his role at Block.one as he transitions to independent community building and investment activities. We thank Brock for his contributions, support, and continued larger than life passion for the EOSIO project.
Side note, I can't help but wonder how much attention this news story would have given the STEEM blockchain if this was written on Steemit instead of Medium. Maybe @ned's dislike for aggrandizement cost us all something here. I for one would much prefer all cryptocurrency projects market themselves on Steemit, including EOS. Silencing a competitor with downvotes only shows weakness where a strong approach innovates and wins. I'm sure there's more to that story I don't know, so I'll just leave it at that.
So back to the story at hand... Is Brock Pierce an evil person? Did he do something wrong so many years ago? I don't know, and I don't know him personally. I do think it's odd that stories about his alleged misconduct get spread far and wide but videos like this from December 2017 only have 134 views:
Brock also directly denied the allegations three years ago.
Say what you want about Brock Pierce. As with many rich, eccentric people, he's a polarizing figure. Maybe EOS has their reasons for distancing themselves from him. Maybe he is just an actor, playing a role.
Either way, I think he's communicated a lot of really important ideas about how distributed ledger technology has the potential to radically improve the world. That communication, to me, is valuable and important. That means Brock is a valuable and important communicator, and I'm thankful for his contributions. I'm thankful he opened up his building today to celebrate the good things cryptocurrency can bring to Puerto Rico.
Day 1 of Blockchain Unbound starts tomorrow whenever I wake up and get down there (it's after 1am already). I don't plan to live post it, but I might be tweeting a bit if you want to follow me there.
Good night. I hope you enjoyed this little peak into something fun that happened today.
