Most people will remember the Winklevoss twins from the 2010 film, The Social Network. How they initially hired Mark Zuckerberg to help bring their vision of a social network to life, only to be played out by Mark, who beat them to the punch with The Facebook. But Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss are so much more than that. And today, they have completely brushed off that saga, to be known in their own right as bitcoin billionaires.
The early Winklevoss days
Born in New York, Cameron and Tyler are mirror image twins. One is left-handed and the other right-handed. This meant they were identical yet complementary in more ways than one. Since young, they demonstrated a good understanding of each other, and displayed great teamwork in lego building and playing musical instruments.
They also have an entrepreneurial streak in them, and since 13 were self taught in HTML and started building websites for others to make money.
They are also competitive rowers, competing in the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, coming in 6th out of 14 countries.
ConnectU versus Facebook
The 2010 film The Social Network sort of painted the Winklevoss twins as a pair of entitled, upper class antagonistic brothers, trigger happy with lawsuits and using money to crush opponents.
The film, directed by David Fincher, was an adaptation of Ben Mezrich’s 2009 book, The Accidental Billionaires. Largely told from the perspective of Eduardo Saverin, a co-founder of Facebook currently residing in Singapore, it interestingly also painted Mark Zuckerberg in a not great light.
The film (and book) tells the story of the unfolding courtroom drama, interspersed with flashbacks of how Facebook grew from the dorm rooms of Harvard into the giant it is today.
The original idea came from the Winklevoss twins, and they’d called it ConnectU. They hired Mark to do the programming, but Mark obviously saw something in it, took it and ran with it on his own, while at the time providing different excuses to the twins for not shipping the code as intended.
This culminated in a long drawn lawsuit, with Facebook eventually settling. The out of court settlement was supposed to be confidential, but was eventually revealed to be around $65M by one of their law firms.
Winklevoss Capital Management
Coming out of the settlement, they were looking to get back in the startup / venture game. In 2012, they set up Winklevoss Capital Management with the $65M settlement money to do just that.
As with any entrepreneur screwed over but dumped with a $65M settlement, they did the only logical thing anyone in their position would; go lick their wounds at a party in Ibiza.
While there, they ran into a chance encounter with David Azar, who introduced them to Charlie Shrem, CEO of BitInstant, a young crypto exchange. They were intrigued by how Bitcoin worked, and decided that if it succeeded, it would be huge beyond anybody’s imagination.
They decided to invest in BitInstant. However, Charlie, a young CEO, didn’t have as much experience, and had some dodgy advisors and partners at the time, and eventually, Charlie himself was arrested on charges of enabling money laundering via BitInstant.
During this time, aside from investing into BitInstant, the Winklevoss twins had also been busy accumulating bitcoin on the cheap, amassing a fortune along the way. Forbes estimates their bitcoin holdings at roughly 70,000, comfortably putting them both at bitcoin billionaire status.
Through Winklevoss Capital, they have invested in startups including Teachable, Authy, BlockFi, Earn (acquired by coinbase), Filecoin, Tezos and ZCash.
Gemini Exchange
Perhaps a little spooked by both the facebook and BitInstant experiences, they decided that anything worth doing, was worth doing themselves. And so they set up Gemini, a global crypto exchange serving both the retail as well as institutional markets.
Gemini has proven itself in the market, and recently surpassed the $30B in assets under management.
They also have a wide range of products, from an exchange, to wallet, interest earning accounts, as well as upcoming credit cards that will offer 3% crypto cashback on all purchases.
For those new to bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, they have cryptopedia, a collection of resources that allows you to immerse yourself in the world of crypto, and come out with a better understanding of how it all works, from the fundamental technical structure, to the ABCs of NFTs.
Nifty Gateway
A huge part of the digital asset space is taken up by NFTs. As such, Gemini made a move to acquire Nifty Gateway back in 2019, as part of their strategic vision to expand from digital currencies into digital art, collectibles and any other forms of NFTs that will emerge from the technology over the coming years.
Interestingly, Nifty gateway was founded by a set of identical twin brothers, Duncan and Griffin Cock Foster.
NFTs over the years have grown beyond cryptokitties to include digital art, memes, digital land, and over time, will also be used to authenticate ownership of real world items. For example, NFT technology can be used to authenticate concert tickets, and ensure that the ticket you bought is actually good for entry to the concert venue.
This prevents fraud from happening. NFTs can also track shipment of actual good to ensure the source of the good is indeed as advertised.
The above piece of artwork, titled The First 5000 Days, by Beeple, sold for US$69,000,000. It currently stands as the most expensive piece of digital art ever to have been sold. To be fair, it is made up of 5,000 pieces of artwork, collaged as one giant piece of art.
The artwork was bought by a programmer based in Singapore, who goes by MetaKovan. He plans to showcase the exhibit in full resolution display in a digital museum, Metaverse,
Future is bright for Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss
Although they are still far behind in terms of net worth compared to Mark Zuckerberg’s $120B, if the forward trajectory of cryptocurrencies and bitcoin remains, there’s a really good chance that they will see their net worth continue skyrocketing into the next decade.
From a seeking out asymmetric opportunities standpoint, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss have so far been 2 for 2.
They may have missed the social network boat, but perhaps in doing so, they landed on an even bigger playing field.
That of the next evolution of money.
Global, digital, sound money that cannot be debased by any one government.
This could be the play of the next 50 years.
I will leave you with something from Tyler to think about.