Blockchain billionaire Brock Pierce on saving Puerto Rico, cryptocurrency games, and fighting controversy

Brock Pierce is a blockchain billionaire, one of the people who got into cryptocurrency when Bitcoin was in its infancy. In fact, he mined his first 50,000 Bitcoins at almost no cost. And then, he misplaced the hard drive, losing out on something like $320 million at today’s Bitcoin price.

But Pierce shrugs it off, as he was way ahead of the game in other ways, seeing the potential of blockchain — a transparent and secure decentralized ledger — and cryptocurrency, a digital currency which uses encryption and blockchain to securely regulate the currency and verify the transfer of funds. Pierce has been one of the pioneers of crypto, and Forbes pegged him at No. 9 in cryptocurrency wealth with holdings of about $1 billion — an amount he has pledged to give away to charity. I interviewed him at the CoinAgenda cryptocurrency event in Las Vegas.