The Winklevoss brothers, the identical twins who sued Mark Zuckerberg over claims that he stole their Facebook idea, have become the first bitcoin billionaires.
And Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss probably also have, in part, Zuckerberg to thank for that as well.
Using that money, the brothers purportedly bought 1 percent of all bitcoin that was in circulation in 2013.
Five years on, the digital currency has upped in value by just under 10,000 percent, turning them into billionaires. It is thought to be the first billion-dollar return for a cryptocurrency investor.
The Winklevoss brothers first heard about bitcoin in 2012 while on holiday in Spain and within three years they had set up a bitcoin exchange, the first licensed operation of its type for buying and selling the digital currency in the U.S.
“We wanted to build an exchange that was similar to Nasdaq or NYSE for digital currency,” said Tyler. “We wanted something that both Wall Street and Main Street felt comfortable with.”
The crypto-currency that is not backed by any central bank or government oversight is a good option for “murders and drug dealers,” he said.
“I remember when people said Facebook was a fad,” Tyler said in the interview with the Financial Times. “We saw this movie play out already with Facebook. We feel like we’re in the same movie again, just with a different cast of characters.”
The brothers were both played by actor Armie Hammer in the Academy Award winning 2010 film “The Social Network” about their battle with Zuckerberg over Facebook.
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