Winklevoss Twins Become World's First Bitcoin Billionaires
The Winklevoss Twins may have missed their first chance when they lost the infamous Facebook lawsuit, but another tech breakthrough has come to bring them an enormous windfall. Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss have become the world's first cryptocurrency billionaires, with the combined bitcoins in their account worth $1.046 billion.
The identical twins were athletes who competed in the 2008 Beijing Olympics rowing competition, but their claim to fame was during the time they sued Mark Zuckerberg for allegedly stealing their idea for what would come to be Facebook today, as recapped by the New York Post.
It was 2004 when they parted ways with Zuckerberg, but nobody could have predicted that they will be joining him back in the billionaire's circles thanks to another tech venture.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
They may have lost out of their chance at a slice of the Facebook pie, now worth half a trillion dollars by June 2017, when they settled for a relatively small $65 million. The twins have another venture in mind after that, though, and it's one that has paid hundreds of times over in just over a decade.
It's Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency that has seen a meteoric rise this year until it finally breached five digits in dollar value earlier last month. The twins have been early proponents of Bitcoin and Blockchain technology even years ago, and they have put their settlement money to bet on the cryptocurrency boom as now seen today.
The brothers used $11 million of their $65 million settlement money to invest in Bitcoin in 2013. The cryptocurrency was just a tiny fraction of the value it has now, and that amount has allowed them to buy as much as 1 percent of all bitcoins that will enter circulation.
At the time, Bitcoin was just around $150 to $250 each.
Now, bitcoin is worth more than $11,400 earlier this week and has shown little sign of slowing down. The 91,666 coins that the twins have bought back in 2013 are now worth a cool $1.046 billion, and they have not sold a single unit of it yet.
