Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss who lost the ownership of Facebook over a dispute with Mark Zuckerberg are now billionaires owing to their business which deals with crypto assets. The dispute which was made famous by the movie ‘The Social Network’ in 2010, showed the twins to have settled for $ 45 million in Facebook stock and $ 20 million in cash. But what followed after? Here’s how the twins, now billionaires, have made it big in the digital trade market boom.
Investing in the Bitcoin
In 2012, Cameron and Tyler invested $ 10 million in the new digital sensation: Bitcoin which was just worth of $ 8 per unit back then. They also founded the family office Winklevoss Capital Management which undertook venture investments and to date, the twins have invested in at least 25 digital asset startups. One of their most recent investment has been in Block-Fi, the fast-growing Bitcoin lending giant. The two investments that have brought them billions in profits so far have been primarily two companies, Gemini and Nifty Gateway.
Gemini Trust Co. is a platform for exchange and portfolio crypto-currency, which assists customers in buying, selling and storing digital assets. It was founded in 2014 and two years later, it became the first exchange to authorise the buy and sell of Ethereum, the second most popular digital currency after Bitcoin. Today, Gemini Trust Co. is an exchange that offers storage for 33 cryptocurrencies of the more than 300 to exist in the market. Additionally, the Winklevoss twins have their own digital currency, which is called the Gemini Dollar. It is pegged to the value of the US dollar and is therefore considered stable.
In November 2019, Gemini Trust Co. purchased Nifty Gateway, a digital art auction platform in the form of NFTs. Today, it is the world’s most exclusive digital art platform since it only offers the platform to a select few artists. It charges a 15% commission on the artists which gets the dollars rolling while also offering a diverse platform to its target audience. It’s most famous is Mike Winkelmann whose work ‘Every Day: The First 5,000 Days’ is the most expensive NFT to date. The digital piece was sold in March 2021 for a whopping $ 69 million.
What does the future look like for the twins?
The Winklevoss twins plan on integrating the two companies, Gemini and Nifty Gateway, into a single entity wherein the NFTs are offered as collaterals for loans being sanctioned in cryptocurrency. As a result, users would be able to leverage their digital assets for financing without actually having to sell them.
The digital trading boom has definitely proved to be beneficial for the twins who are here to revolutionise the market with their offerings.
