According to the News, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss bought 1 percent of all currently drilled bitcoin for a price of $11 million in 2013. Since then, the $11 million crypto-bet has expanded by almost 10,000 percent, earning the twins the first bitcoin billionaires.
The brothers first achieved notoriety in 2006 after starting legal proceedings against Mark Zuckerberg, demanding the Facebook founder was a phony who stole their idea for the now-universal social media platform. In 2009, the Winklevoss twins accepted a settlement from Facebook evaluated at more than $65 million.
The twins used part of their contract money to invest heavily in bitcoin. In October 2015, the siblings launched Gemini, a bitcoin exchange described by the Financial Times as “one of the first regulated and licensed digital currency exchanges in the developed world.”
“We wanted to establish an exchange that was similar to Nasdaq or NYSE for the digital currency,” Tyler told the FT in an interview. “We wanted something that both Wall Street and Main Street felt comfy with.”
The twins explain bitcoin as “better than gold.” The cryptocurrency, which was presented in 2009 as an alternative to government-controlled fiat, has enjoyed a meteoric rise in value over the last year.
Now up more than 12-fold for the year, one bitcoin was bargaining at below $1,000 on January 1. It remains to be seen whether Mark Zuckerberg will claim credit for the twins’ wise investment.
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