Once best known as the Harvard rowers who claimed Mark Zuckerberg stole their idea for a social network, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss are now Bitcoin billionaires.
The $6 billion twins have been coding the future through a range of crypto-adjacent startups since 2012, when they were outcast investors with $65 million to spend.
The money came from their Facebook settlement, and the Winklevii were shunned because of it: Startups feared reprisal from Zuckerberg for working with his twin rivals.
When the duo learned about Bitcoin, then trading for just $8, they were attracted to the idea of a math-backed digital currency and invested millions.
They bought into the crypto community, supporting an early leader in Bitcoin exchange until dark-web dealings caused the business to shutter.
In 2014, believing that success lay in regulation, the twins founded their own cryptocurrency exchange, Gemini.
Gemini now trades up to $29 billion a year in 33 cryptocurrencies (including its own) as one of the first Bitcoin-focused, New York State–verified banks.
The brothers’ most buzzworthy investment, though, is Nifty Gateway, a marketplace of nonfungible tokens (NFTs)—and the world’s most exclusive digital-art platform.
Worth $1 billion, Nifty Gateway is responsible for spotlighting creators such as Beeple, now the third-most-valuable living artist after a $69 million Christie’s auction in March.
Beeple returned the favor: His record-breaking sale drew attention to Nifty Gateway, which now sells $4 million in NFTs every five minutes.
Though the NFT gold rush won’t last forever, the Winklevoss twins are laying the foundation for an increasingly virtual world fueled by cryptocurrency—a new social network.
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