# Brock Pierce **Brock Pierce** (born 1980) is a former child actor turned cryptocurrency entrepreneur whose career forms one of [[Dave Troy]]'s key "[[The Octopus]]" through-lines: the path from selling *intangible* virtual goods for real money to Bitcoin, and the personal link between that world and [[Steve Bannon]]. In Troy's Part 2 ("Gold, Silver, and Cryptocurrency") Pierce is the human bridge from video-game gold-farming to crypto-politics. ## From child actor to virtual goods Pierce appeared as a child in Disney films including *The Mighty Ducks* (1992) and *First Kid*. In 2001, aged 20, he co-founded **[[Internet Gaming Entertainment]]** (IGE), which pioneered selling virtual goods — currency and items "mined" in games like *EverQuest* and later *World of Warcraft* — to players wanting a shortcut. IGE helped normalize the idea of selling intangible digital goods at an arbitrary real-money valuation, a conceptual precursor to cryptocurrency. ## The Bannon connection Struggling to scale, IGE brought in former [[Goldman Sachs]] banker [[Steve Bannon]] to raise capital. Bannon arranged a roughly **$60 million** investment from Goldman Sachs and other private-equity firms in **February 2006** — about $20 million of which let Pierce take money off the table — and Bannon subsequently took over as CEO, ousting Pierce (c. 2006–07). Bannon ran the gold-farming business until departing in 2012 to lead [[Breitbart News]]; IGE floundered afterward. > [!note] This is the Bannon origin most people miss > Before Breitbart and Trump, Bannon's formative business was the global market in video-game gold. Troy treats this as more than trivia: it is the same "value from nothing, priced by belief" logic that runs through gold-bug ideology and crypto. ## Bitcoin and politics After Satoshi Nakamoto launched Bitcoin in 2009, Pierce became an early and prominent cryptocurrency investor and promoter (associated with EOS/Block.one, Tether's early history, and Puerto Rico crypto ventures). In 2020 he ran a long-shot independent campaign for U.S. president; his campaign manager was [[Brittany Kaiser]], the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower and Bannon collaborator — closing a loop between the data-targeting world and the crypto world. ## See also - [[Internet Gaming Entertainment]] · [[Steve Bannon]] · [[Brittany Kaiser]] · [[Hard Money Politics]] · [[The Octopus]]