Brock Pierce Claims to Lead ‘Official’ BTC Delegation to El Salvador
3 min read
One of the odd things about BTC is that, as a decentralized network, it is very difficult to lobby for it in any “official” capacity. BTC has no CEO, the pseudonymous founder has been missing for a decade and the network’s users share no unifying aim.
It’s strange news, then, that Brock Pierce, the chairman of the BTC Foundation and former co-founder of Block.one, claims to have led an “official delegation of BTC ambassadors” to El Salvador this week.
In a trip joined by the El Salvadoran Ambassador to the US, Milena Mayorga, Pierce carried the flag on behalf of hundreds of thousands of anonymous users, few of whom have declared him their representative, and planted it firmly in the Central American country, where President Nayib Bukele recently declared BTC as legal tender.
“Very honored to lead this official delegation of BTC ambassadors to El Salvador to educate the government about how BTC, Blockchain and technology can create a brighter future for everyone in their nation,” Pierce tweeted on June 16.
Pierce said his visit wasn’t the first “official” BTC visit, but the first to visit El Salvador in an official capacity since the start of Covid lockdowns.
His use of “official” drew a whole lot of hate online. Pierce said that it referred to “an official formal delegation of members of the ecosystem to meet with the government of El Salvador.”
The hate didn’t stop, so Pierce backtracked a day later, calling it a “poor choice of words due to the reaction of some.” However, he maintained that “we can all be evangelists, advocates and ambassadors.”
Pierce further angered his Twitter following today when he tweeted a picture of him and President Bukele on the front page of New York-based Spanish-speaking newspaper Noticia, alongside a blowout story about his trip on page 8.
The visit to El Salvador by the delegation has made world wide news.
We’re making history. pic.twitter.com/VpkAA0ac3E— Brock Pierce (@brockpierce) June 17, 2021
“The visit to El Salvador by the delegation has made world wide news. We’re making history,” he wrote in his tweet.
The thing is, none of the editions of Noticia—not the Long Island, Suffolk or Nassau edition—covered Pierce’s visit. The front-page picture is of a doctor vaccinating a boy.
Actual front page and page eight of Noticia (Long Island edition)
Pierce’s visit was covered by a local newspaper of a similar name, La Noticia SV, but this had nothing to do with the newspaper on which Pierce claimed to have made front-page news. Pierce could not be reached for comment by press time.
Pierce’s election to the chair of the BTC Foundation in 2014 was not uncontested. Several members of the foundation resigned in protest over allegations of his “past behaviour that involved drugs and sexual misconduct.”
Pierce, a former child TV star, used to run the Digital Entertainment Network before it went bankrupt in 2000. Employees of the video production company alleged that Pierce had pressured them for sex when they were minors.
Pierce has denied these claims; two of the suits were dropped, according to Reuters, and Pierce reportedly paid $21,000 to settle another.
In 2020, Pierce ran for president of the United States. Alas, he lost to the “official” President of the United States, Joe Biden.
