Full transcript: Brian Rose on Future Blockchain Summit
0:00 Announcer: Bring you back in. Thank you. All right, everybody. Don’t go anywhere. We were setting up for a special final presentation conversation. I’m sorry.
0:09 You’ve heard some amazing things here at the Future Blockchain Summit and the exchange stage. We’ve got governance, finance, solar, AI, wireless. You just heard amazing talks. Next up, so if you’re out in the floor, I’m talking to you. If you’re out in the floor, this is what I’m talking to.
0:29 I want you to come in for this incredibly special last added conversation with the Bitcoin Foundation and London Real. So please, if you hear me out there, please come on in for this extra special conversation at the final piece of programming here at the Future Blockchain Summit at the exchange stages here at JITEX. All right. I feel like we’re going to start doing this. OK, so this final talk here on stage with London Real and the Bitcoin Foundation.
1:02 First, your host, Mr. Brian Rose, please come up. All right, let’s go. Let’s go.
1:08 Brian Rose: Last but not least, thanks for coming today.
1:12 We have an excellent guest. I’m really looking forward to this conversation is Brock Pierce. He’s a Bitcoin pioneer, blockchain innovator, futurist, philanthropist, investor. Give it up for Brock. Welcome, man.
1:28 Brock Pierce: Good to be here.
1:29 Brian Rose: So look, there’s a lot I want to talk to you about. I want to ask you about what it’s like to be an OG. I want to ask you about presidential elections. I want to talk about ETFs and Gary Gensler.
1:41 But before we get started, you once said that bull markets create bullshits and bear markets bear fruits. Yeah. So what does Brock Pierce make of, say, the last two years of this market? What was the good, the bad and the ugly?
1:57 Brock Pierce: Oh, the last couple of years have been I think the most troublesome.
2:02 You know, we’ve seen this with every cycle, whether it be Mt. Gox, you know, and the fallout that has come from that. But in this one with Terra Luna, with FTX, I mean, it’s definitely been to the outside world. One, because we’re living through a period of time where trust is eroding, right, in our institutions. And I’m embarrassed when I look at our own industry by the erosion of trust in what it is that we’re building.
2:40 You know, even though at its core, blockchain technology is meant to eliminate the need for trust, though we’re not at that point that these are trustless systems yet. You actually do have to trust the leaders, you know, those that are building the systems. And yet again, we’re finding ourselves in another one of these periods, more so than ever before, where, you know, if you’re not deep in this, you’re going to question it. You’re going to be skeptical of it. So we’re in another one of those bear markets.
3:12 Now, the good news is, you know, bull markets, when markets are up, everybody’s winning. Everything looks great. But when the tide goes out, you know, you see who’s, you know, Emperor has no clothes. And so that’s where the riffraff goes away. And those that are really committed to the cause that are here for the long haul, you know, end up building the great things, which is why I say, you know, bull markets produce bullshit because everything’s going up.
3:40 Everybody’s running in. Everybody’s investing. Everybody feels great. And it’s when the tide goes out that, you know, everybody scatters that isn’t really here long term. And like I say, I don’t I skipped Terra Luna. I skipped FTX because I don’t trust anyone that hasn’t survived a winter north of the wall.
4:02 If you haven’t survived a bear market, you know, I don’t trust you yet. I have to see you go through one cycle before I’m willing to trust you with anything meaningful. I might open an account. I might play with your systems. But I’m not going to allow you to be custody, you know, to have custody of anything meaningful of mine.
4:26 I take that back. There was one exception as a new firm. But the person that had built it, you know, had been through two other cycles. So I trusted the people. They made a mistake in risk management. But in general, that’s that’s my view on this.
4:40 I think that right now, great things are being built. And as we enter that next bull market, we will see, you know, those those systems and infrastructure get properly battle tested as we experience another run of scaling. As we’re watching trust erode, you know, broadly in institutions everywhere. I mean, for a guy who was there from the very beginning building so many of the basics, does it I mean, does it break your heart a little bit when you see an FTX fail and the rest of the world look at this market and just say, oh, what a bunch of jokers. I mean, is that is it because is it bother you?
5:14 Brock Pierce: It embarrasses me. Yeah, me too. Like it embarrasses me.
5:17 It’s like I got it. I get it in the early days. But the fact that we’ve been going through these cycles, I was talking with a number of other luminaries last night after another event. And that was the conversation I had. I think that we when we talk about self regulation, you know, those of us that are often referred to as oh, geez.
5:38 I think we need to do a better job of questioning newcomers that have come out of nowhere and it can be done gracefully. It can be done politely. You know, you can do it, you know, with some courtesy, you know, in terms of the public forum, ask questions, even difficult questions without being rude, but then not in front of an audience. You can ask really tough questions and be hard on people because I think that, you know, I take some responsibility.
6:10 I’ve always tried to be nice to everyone and give everyone the benefit of the doubt. And I think that we could have done a better job as an industry because a bunch of these things were identifiable. I mean, take Dokwon and Terra Luna. In that instance, I have an issue with pride. Pride come before the fall.
6:32 Zero humility and just, you know, a personality type that does not belong in a real position of leadership. Quite frankly, if we’re talking about building a better world, a world that can work for everyone. And FTX was obvious in many ways. All you had to do is take a look at what was going on there and you can see issues. And I also felt I probably did 50 interviews with, you know, the Foxes and the CNBCs and everybody.
6:58 And one of the other culprits that normally doesn’t get any blame, and they’re not going to pay financially, but I do blame the Sequoias. You know, I was one of the founders of Blockchain Capital, the first venture fund in this space that funded many of the companies. And so I’ve worn a venture capital hat a number of times. And one of our jobs as VCs is to be kingmakers, right? It is to be gatekeepers. It is to be guardrails.
7:27 And especially when you’ve got a young guy like Sam Bankman Fried that doesn’t have the experience. Like one of our jobs is to take board seats. One of our jobs is to make sure that there’s adequate systems of governance in place. You know, it should have been obvious with any due diligence, you got a conflict of interest with Alameda over here. And how are those things being addressed? And that is the job of those capital allocators.
7:55 These are not new, you know, some startup VC group that, you know, it’s not a three arrows. This is Sequoia. This is Andreessen Horowitz. They know better. But part of their problem is they’ve gone from being venture capitalists to growth equity people.
8:12 And they’re managing so much capital that they’re no longer doing the jobs that a VC should do. And I like to call them out because they hold their position in the industry because of the pedigree that they’ve developed over decades and decades. And so shame on them for not having done that because they do know better and it is their job. And a lot of people got hurt because of it. And I hope the limited partners hold them accountable.
8:41 And the partner in those firms that did it should be fired and say, yep, we made a mistake. That person’s out. Won’t happen again.
8:49 Brian Rose: Yeah, I interviewed Dan Tapiero of 10T Holdings and he passed on FTX. And he had a whole background on why. And he was said, Sam’s dad was on the board.
8:58 There was no other board members. The multiples were ridiculous. And when he tried to get numbers, he said they acted like they were doing them a favor on due diligence. And he just said, this has all the warning signs. I’m a macro guy. I’m out.
9:09 Brock Pierce: Well, that’s what he did to everybody that was coming in.
9:12 He played. You come in, he’d sell you on how hot the deal is. And he’d tell you, you have to make a decision by end of day. You know, basically a FOMO sort of manipulative tactic that shouldn’t work on the smartest institutional funds. Right. But it did. It did.
9:28 Brian Rose: Right. Shows you how the FOMO was so big at that point. Let’s talk about moving forward.
9:34 On Monday, there was a tweet went out by Cointelegraph by accident saying that Bitcoin ETF was approved. Bitcoin shut up, came back down. What do you make of this whole, everyone’s waiting for the ETF. What do you make of Gensler? And when it comes in, do you see it fundamentally changing this market? There’s rumors 600 billion could come in immediately, which is the market cap of Bitcoin.
9:56 That’s interesting. And there’s potentially, you know, trillions more. What do you what do you think of that?
10:02 Brock Pierce: I do think it’s a huge deal. Now, we’ll see the proof is in the pudding, though. I think it’s a huge deal.
10:08 And it’s been nearly a decade, you know, since the Winklevoss brothers filed, you know, their application to establish an ETF. You know, we have had, you know, there’s been vehicles that have been out there, but not, I’d say, efficient or functional for a variety of reasons. But this has been an ongoing story. But I think the black rocks of the world, the biggest financial institutions in the world filing their ETFs, they should have the political clout.
10:38 To push this through. Obviously, what Cointelegraph did was, you know, and a general problem we have with media and a lack of fact checking, which is a problem everywhere. I mean, back to trust eroding in our institutions. And we wonder why the world is the way it is. But I think it’s a big deal.
10:57 And the SEC has not rejected it. I think there’s tremendous pressure being put on Densler and the SEC to do something. And so I think that we might see something happen soon. And I feel I think what the SEC has done here is terrible for the American people. The American people should have had access to cheap Bitcoin at sub $1,000, where you had proper custody and accessibility, where you could have bought it through your brokerage account, fidelity, whatever, and not had to have been an expert in operating a wallet, securing your private keys, whatever it might be.
11:40 And the American people stood to benefit greatly. And the SEC is entirely responsible for that not happening.
11:47 Brian Rose: No, I can make a counter argument as to why that shouldn’t have happened then.
11:52 Brock Pierce: Sure, we are where we are now. And I think as a general sort of accessibility, it should be huge.
11:58 Brian Rose: I mean, will it be 600 billion? I don’t know. Will it be 60 billion? I think probably so.
12:03 And is it somewhere in between?
12:05 Brock Pierce: Yeah, that’s a lot of buy pressure that should be in there. Has it been priced into the market? Unlikely. We have a halvening coming up as well.
12:13 I don’t like to make price predictions, but I think it should drive a lot of buying into the market.
12:19 Brian Rose: Right. Speaking of Densler, he seems to be acting more like a political animal and less of like a regulator. Speaking of politics, we’ve got the presidential race coming up in a year. I ask because you ran for president, I believe, back in 20. And you got some pretty interesting insights from it.
12:37 Just for full disclosure, I ran to be mayor of London in 21. And I think I came up with the same conclusions you did. What do you make of this race? We’ve got two candidates and an independent. Bobby Kennedy was at the Bitcoin Miami conference and has said he’s pro-crypto. Trump, I don’t know if he said anything, but he has minted his own NFTs. Some of them are very good looking.
12:57 And then Biden seems to be in that kind of Gensler camp. Does this election matter when it comes to Bitcoin adoption?
13:05 Brock Pierce: I mean, it certainly matters to the United States. And what the United States does does affect other places. So, yeah, it matters. Yeah, I ran for president in 2020.
13:16 I announced on July 4th of election year, meaning there’s no way to win the election. You can’t get on enough of the ballots, though I broke every ballot record. And also in Utah County, Utah, some friends of mine implemented blockchain-based voting in the United States. And I received the first blockchain vote for a presidential candidate, which I will forever hold that title, which is quite cool. And for a moment in time, because that turned on an hour before the rest of the election did, I had more votes in Utah than every other candidate combined.
13:55 I was way ahead with all of one vote. And so it was a reconnaissance mission for me. I ran as an independent, and so I wanted to understand every way in which the system was rigged. I spent about $7 million of my own money and ran, you know, really a campaign for six months to understand the traps, right, to understand the path. I’ve gotten very involved in New York elections following that. Almost ran for US Senate out of Vermont. Super PACs, everything else. In terms of what happens here, I think I was the first person to teach Melania Trump about NFTs.
14:38 Steve Bannon worked full-time for me for about seven years in my 20s. I know RFK Jr. or Bobby Kennedy quite well. I work within all sides, and it does matter greatly. You know, we’ll see what happens with Trump, obviously. If he makes it all the way to the end of the election, I mean, he certainly wins the primaries and is certainly well positioned to win the presidential.
15:06 Biden, again, same thing. If you saw what happened with RFK when he was running as a Democrat, there’s no possible way Biden doesn’t win the primaries if he runs. If you want my personal opinion, I don’t think either of them should be running. I don’t think America wants a rerun of division or a rerun, to use a television analogy of 2020. I think America would like to see a new season, and we still have some time. Hopefully we get to that point. I love what Mitt Romney did.
15:41 A major senator that just announced that he’s not going to be running in the next election, and he’s younger than both of those candidates, saying, At my age, I will not live long enough to experience the consequences of my actions, and I really admire that, and I don’t see this as a negative. It’s like in life. I really admire the Michael Jordans, the Jerry Seinfelds, the Jim Browns. There’s this concept of quitting when you’re on top. It’s taking the high road, because this is how you ultimately create an ideal, lasting legacy.
16:24 This is what the best of the best do. I thank both of them for their service, and I’m a big fan of RFK and that tease. I mean, I live in Puerto Rico, and so I bought the W Hotel in Vieques, and I do a bunch of things on that island, which is a part of the United States that really has the worst education, the worst infrastructure, the worst health. It was bombed by the Navy for decades after Hurricane Maria went over one year without electricity. This is the United States of America.
17:03 It’s gone nearly six years without an emergency room. People just die. This is the United States of America, and so I went to make that kind of my problem. It’s a small place, less than 10,000 people live there. But RFK Jr., Bobby Kennedy went down there 20 years ago, 21 years ago, to protest the Navy’s bombing of this place, and he spent 36 days in a maximum security prison in Puerto Rico because of this.
17:33 A person that is willing to spend 36 days in prison to help out less than 10,000 Americans in a US territory where they can’t even vote, they don’t have representation, is a person who’s got their principles right. This is a person that truly gives a voice to the voiceless. What he’s done for the environment over the course of his career, the fact that his father was assassinated along with his uncle, I love people willing to die because that’s real.
18:02 That’s real conviction. I call that incorruptible. I mean, this is the sort of thing that I want to see in leaders. We can find all sorts of problems with anyone, right? Is anyone perfect? No.
18:18 But when we talk about character, when we talk about principle, there are some really admirable things when I take a look at that man. The sort of thing where it’s like, I really hope we see leaders like this, and at a time where, wow, we have a lot of lack of choice, because who in their right mind would run for office right now in the United States? I mean, you’re looking at potentially getting indicted, but certainly having your name and your family dragged through the mud from a media perspective at a minimum guaranteed.
18:56 Like, who would want to do that? We’ve made it so on appealing for people to run for office that, you know, we want people that are ultimately there to serve the people, not themselves. And we have these problems. I mean, I’m in D.C. I’m the only person from this industry I’m aware of that walks the halls of Congress on a regular basis, spends time with so many of our legislators.
19:20 And, you know, the problem we have there, and don’t hate the player, hate the game. Those legislators are generally not reading the legislation. It’s a bunch of staffers doing it. And the legislation is written by special interests that are delivered by lobbyists. This system has been captured. We talk about Web 3, right? Web 1 was this, and I gave a TEDx talk on this if you want to watch me speak more to it.
19:47 But Web 1 was this idealistic sort of world of the democratization of information and what the world could be like if information was really available to everyone. Web 2 was the system was captured by Big Tech. Web 3 is the de-monopolization, right, of Big Tech and bringing us back to the original ideals of Web 1 by building systems that can ultimately be more fair and where you’ve got the ability to move your information from one place to another, to own your data, right, to participate in the economic sort of value that’s created in some capacity if you choose, right?
20:31 I look at government very similarly. The founding fathers of the United States, the ideals, let’s call that Gov 1. Gov 2 is the system that’s been captured. Call it by special interest, the fourth body of government to the United States, the media, right? You know, and Gov 3 is, can we actually get back to elected officials that are there with merit?
20:56 You know, they’re there because they’ve actually done the work and bring real expertise that are not there to serve themselves but everybody else. You know, is that possible? Can we, you know, end up with Gov 3? And I think that the analogies to Web 3 and Gov 3 are very similar. I’m obviously someone that cares deeply, you know, about this and hence why I spend so much time on Capitol Hill.
21:22 Brian Rose: So are there any Web 3 companies that can really push this narrative forward from a media perspective to a finance perspective to social? Because, like you said, these things are controlling the whole process right now in a Web 2 way.
21:39 Brock Pierce: Well, I mean, in terms of what pushes things forward in a practical, tactical sense, what we need now is less apathy. We need civic engagement and participation. As I like to say, the future is going to happen to you or with you. You know, if you don’t get involved, someone else is going to decide your future for you.
22:02 And they may not have your best interests at heart. So your participation is required. You have to get involved. I think what Web 3 and what we can do here is engage the youth. The sleeping giant in the United States is young people. If they got involved, it’s game over immediately, which I think means you got to make it fun.
22:27 I mean, generally, most Americans are like politics, voting, governance. I don’t want anything to do with it because they’ve made it so on appealing. So it’s a matter of making it fun. It’s a matter of making it engaging. It’s a matter of educating people, you know, which we can do. I mean, that’s what we try to do.
22:48 And the moment people realize that they’ve always had the power to create the change and they’ve just been deterred for this long, this period of time, we have the ability to do it right now. You know, we can do that with technology by putting drones in the heavens and create symbols of engagement with YouTube and Instagram. Can we actually get people to realize what’s going on? You know, the Russell brands are doing a great job of it. We all have the ability to do it. You know, it’s actually recognizing the importance of it. If you’re an American, you know, each place is different.
23:29 Obviously, what we see here in the UAE is very successful. You know, you’ve got visionary leadership. You know, we don’t have that in the United States anymore. I mean, back to vision, like I asked this question, like, what is the mission statement of the United States? What’s our goal? Where are we trying to go? You know, it’s the largest organization in the world. How do you run an organization without a mission statement? You know, in the process of consensus.
24:08 But what about a collective mission statement for the world? What is our mission statement collectively? You know, it’s not about GDP anymore. We can’t just have growth for growth’s sake anymore. It’ll kill us, right? At some point, we have to start finding other metrics by which to measure our success.
24:32 You know, one of the things that I proposed on the presidential campaign, you know, because one of our original intents was life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Like, what if one of the metrics that we used, we started measuring life? With life expectancy, for example. That’s another way that we could hold our government accountable, right? And liberty, a freedom score. You know, Bhutan, obviously, has done a good job with the creation of the gross national happiness, but there’s a bunch of other metrics.
25:02 How do we want to measure and define success? You know, where are we going? I mean, I’m personally, with everything going on in the world right now, peace on earth. Like, how about peace? Like, we could definitely use that right now. I pray for it every day.
25:18 Anyway, these are the things that we should be thinking about, and it matters everywhere. We all share this planet, and we ultimately have to learn how to coexist, you know, peacefully and celebrate our diversity. Thank God we’re all different. Otherwise, this place would be boring. We’d all be wearing hats like yours, if that was the case.
25:39 Brian Rose: You mentioned Dubai. How can you compare and contrast a place like New York City to Dubai?
25:45 I mean, I came here a year ago for Future Blockchain Summit, and I pulled my phone out in the mall, and I just did a vlog, and I said, Dubai is what America used to be. It used to be a place where you could go west, and the government would say, make something, create something, we’re going to leave you alone, you can build. And you just talked about a long-term vision here, a mission statement in the Emirates versus America, which is a four-year cycle, which is a two-year cycle.
26:09 Good point, no mission statement. What can we learn from Dubai? What do you think of Dubai? It’s growing at a massive pace. And will the US or Western Europe ever be able to learn lessons from this place?
26:20 Brock Pierce: I mean, I think, yes, we can all learn lessons from anyone or anywhere that is performing, that’s having success. We should be studying success, and be fast followers.
26:38 Fortune or the future favors the bold, and what you had is visionary, bold, courageous leadership here. And you’re seeing the fruit of those decisions. And yeah, you take a look at a place like New York, you know, the economic heart of the United States, and still to a large degree, some degree, the world. And which way does it go? Does it become Gotham City? Or does it have a rebirth, a revival? Because it goes through some meaningful change.
27:16 Like, we have to do these things every now and then. I hope everyone’s gone through that in their own life, right? Sometimes we got to go through that, that sort of rebirth, that saying, what do I need to shed? What’s no longer serving me? And so New York is in one of those places right now where its future is going to be determined by the decisions they make.
27:41 And I’m rooting for everyone everywhere. We want everyone to succeed. I don’t subscribe to this mindset of scarcity. I dream of a world of abundance. You know, a world where we can all win, right?
28:00 Always and in all ways. And so I spent a lot of time in New York, I spent a lot of time with the leadership there. I mean, Mayor Eric Adams, to his credit, has been trying. Two days after he won the election, he tweeted that he’s taking his first three paychecks in Bitcoin.
28:22 Shortly thereafter, the news did come out that the day after he won the election, he flew to Puerto Rico on my plane. So I think people figured out how that happened. But you have people that are willing to listen. I took a role in the United Nations. My permanent mission is advising youth and leadership in 21 countries, Spain, Portugal, the Dominican Republic, and every country in Central and South America.
28:53 I started my own organization, unicorn.org, the United Council of Rising Nations. I advise 30 other countries in their heads of state on basically how to become a unicorn nation, a startup nation by embracing innovation. Right. There’s all sorts of incredible things you can do right now to tackle, you know, the biggest opportunity, opportunities or challenges your nation faces. I mean, we’ve never lived in a more exciting time. It’s, you know, very concerning on the one hand.
29:28 But we have so many, so many things that we can do right now to solve problems in ways that we’ve never dreamed of.
29:35 Brian Rose: How does Brock Pierce invest? I think you’ve been involved in over 5 billion transactions off stage. You were saying you’re doing 1,500 deals right now. I mean, if you look at your CV, it’s off the charts, you know, from Eon to Tether to all the projects you’re involved in.
29:51 Like, how do you do that? Why do you do that? Is that your way of giving value to the world? And how do you invest?
30:00 Brock Pierce: I’ve already won this game so many times over. I don’t play or live for me anymore. Right. I’m only interested in us and our collective outcome.
30:11 And so everything I do is at the highest level is in service to call it God. And then underneath that sort of responsibility, my focuses are in the areas of governance, consciousness, and innovation is a tool for transformation and everything falls into those buckets. A lot of the things I do are educational because I need to learn and I learned by doing so, like, in buying nursing homes this summer, now hospitals, airports, marinas, energy, food, support 400 plus farms.
30:55 I mean, water infrastructure, a lot of infrastructure these last few years, mostly because I need to know how things work. If you want to fix something or change something, you have to pay tuition. You have to have done your time, you know. And so I’m involved in so many things that it doesn’t make sense unless you understand sort of that overarching mission, which is how do we upgrade, you know, our systems of infrastructure so that they better serve us.
31:30 Right. How do you take care of our elderly? Right. And create better places for them. And it turns out really basic stuff, the paint you put in there costs nothing extra, but it actually affects wellbeing.
31:52 I mean, there’s just so many little things that aren’t done. And that’s one of the things I noticed. I just go around and I lift up the hood and I look at systems. And we’re often going, well, why is that the way it is? It’s because so many people are so short-sighted and the status quo is just going through a repetitive sort of cycle of doing the same thing, often the same way. And there’s minimal innovation occurring.
32:19 And you’re like, well, you know, somebody else should be doing that. And I look at things, I’m like, why is no one doing that? I used to think, well, someone must be. And then I often find out that no one is. And I’m like, wow, why is no one doing that thing? And then all of a sudden I ask myself, if not us, who, if not now, when? And then I go, oh, God, I got to go do that thing again. I have no idea how to do that.
32:44 And then I start doing it and then I pray that somebody else that really has the skills has been looking at that thing, wanting to do that same thing, but they didn’t have the courage to try. They didn’t have the courage to do it. And hopefully through my action of showing up, you know, and dancing that way that they finally say, well, actually, that’s what I want to do that. That’s what I wanted to do. And it’s like, yeah, take my spot. And then I hand the baton over to those people that are better qualified to do that thing. And I find myself like a fire starter just going place to place to place until those that are really qualified to do that thing show up and take that seat from me.
33:28 And I just do that over and over and over again all day every day. And I don’t sleep.
33:33 Brian Rose: I believe you don’t sleep. Talk to me about that word conscious. You said that, but we don’t really talk about that enough.
33:41 The single biggest unlock for every problem we’re facing on this planet is people to try to get more conscious. I think in politics or in technology or in all events around the world, everyone is looking for someone to solve their problems. It’s his fault. When are we going to elect a president that fixes this? And you said it before, the youth needs to be engaged. They need to feel like they’re part of that issue. How important is us to become more conscious? And how do we do that?
34:09 Brock Pierce: Well, I think that alone solves every problem. I mean, you know, peace on earth comes from inner peace, right? Mindfulness, consciousness. I mean, I like to talk about money, for example, right? Money is just a form of stored energy or energy. As Bruce Lee would say, it wishes to flow like water. It’s a current, see? We’re just meant to be conductors of it, directing that energy to the things we wish to see change or impacted.
34:44 And every time we transact, we are giving power to something. And so if you are mindful and conscious of what you transact with, what you buy, you are giving power to something and that ultimately to an organization and people. And so if you consciously empower those things that are good and are going to make the world a better place, those things will thrive. And those things that are not serving, that are ultimately causing harm, will transform, which is a positive way of saying die.
35:23 And so that’s what we can do. I call myself the conscious capitalist. We still need incentives, right? Because that motivates us. But we need mindfulness, which is the consciousness or the awareness of the impact of our actions.
35:43 And as we become mindful of what we do and the impact it has, it doesn’t mean we’re not going to make mistakes, but we learn. Let’s learn. Because we can and be mindful and know that everything we do has an impact. Be mindful of what you do. Think about it.
36:07 Like, it’s not that complicated. You know, don’t be sheeple. Right? Don’t just be manipulated by whatever it is saying, go here. Take the moment to think, ask questions, you know, and ask yourself, like, you know, what do you want to see in the world? What kind of world do you want to live in?
36:30 You know, we, we have the ability to co create a better world. We’re living in that moment right now. I mean, look at like what we have in this space. What we’re doing with this technology, you know, we get to choose what kind of systems we want. You know, and make sure that you’re picking systems that are ultimately going to make the world better. And take a look at the people and what they’re building. Right? Back to principles. Looking for people of integrity. Doesn’t mean they’re perfect.
37:11 Right? Everybody makes mistakes, but are they accountable? Do they take responsibility? Do they operate with transparency? You know, and when you see cool people doing good things, like, show up and support them. Like, one of the companies I’ve been funding for a while, it’s this company called Dollar Donation Club, or dollardonationclub.com, DDC.
37:39 The idea is you can give a dollar a day, a dollar a week, a dollar a month, more if you like, a dollar once. And try to build the largest collective philanthropic organization in the world. It’s a flying pig, right? I’d like to see pigs fly. But the idea is humanity’s checklist. With absolute transparency and how do you get all the plastic out of the ocean? How do you prevent plastic from getting in the ocean? You know, all these sort of problems and how do we solve them?
38:11 And it’s like so hard, you know, to get people to use things like this because most people, it’s like this concept of no good deed goes unpunished. Like, bad behavior is rewarded and good behavior is, you know, punished. That’s changing. And that changes with us as we support those systems. And we can create a paradigm shift.
38:41 Brian Rose: Final couple questions. How do you stay conscious and how can anybody here get more conscious? Are you into meditations, breath work, plant medicines? What are the things that work for you and what are the things you practice regularly and people should look into?
39:04 Brock Pierce: Yeah, there’s a lot of things that we don’t teach our kids, like starting with breathing, how to breathe. Breath work is a great place to start, you know, meditation, but just taking time, you know, to be quiet, to reflect, to look inward or to not think, to silence the mind.
39:27 These are all powerful things, you know, there’s a lot of ancient practices, ancient natural medicines and things that exist as well. I mean, there’s many ways, you know, and sound, sound healing. There’s light. I mean, there’s so many tools that are out there that I encourage you to explore. A lot of it, you know, in our spiritual practice, right? You know, they’re all good. They’re all good pathways. I mean, a big part of it is you have to take the time to do those things. Consciousness doesn’t come easily if you don’t take a moment to pause, right?
40:17 You know, if you don’t step back and evaluate what’s going on, it’s going to be hard to be conscious. You know, you kind of have to go through this regular practice of stepping back and evaluating, you know, what you’re doing and why. You know, always ask yourself, why am I doing this?
40:39 Brian Rose: Final question. What’s Brock Pierce doing 10 years from now, 2033? I’m back on the stage with you. Where will you be? What will you have done? What will you be doing?
40:51 Brock Pierce: Well, I mean, by 2033, a decade from now, I think the world’s going to look very different. I’ll be celebrating most likely, dancing abundantly. Because I think that we’ll have solved and overcome most of the greatest challenges of our time. I think that we’ll have done most of that by 2033, you know, and, you know, we’ll be sitting around talking about how we did it. High fiving, listening to some great music, you know, dancing on these beautiful beaches and looking back on how we effectively saved the world when we were on the brink of losing all we had. Most of us unaware of it.
42:02 Brian Rose: Amen to that. Love the optimism. Love your energy. Thank you, Brock Pierce. Appreciate everything you do.
42:16 Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen, we’re gonna do some photos up front here. This concludes our programming for the future of Blockchain Summit.
42:33 The Exchange Stage. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on. Let’s be safe here, people. Calm down. Calm down. Calm down, everybody. All right.
42:47 But that concludes the future of Blockchain Summit here at the Exchange Stage. It’s been a great four days. Yes, four days because I was here on Sunday. Four days of programming here. Thank you very much. And I hope you enjoy the rest of your Jitex.
43:04 Conference and anything else you’re doing here in Dubai. Thank you.
