Twins find vindication in a bitcoin fortune
The Winklevoss twins have carved an unorthodox path toward fame in the American business world.
They went to Harvard University and then on to the Olympics as rowers. Along the way, they fought a legal battle with Mark Zuckerberg over the ownership of Facebook. In the Oscar-nominated movie, “The Social Network,” they were portrayed as uptight gentry, outwitted by Zuckerberg, the brilliant, budding tech mogul.
Cameron, the left-handed Winklevoss brother, and Tyler, the right-handed one, followed that with a risky bet: They used money from a $65 million settlement with Zuckerberg to load up on bitcoin. That turned them into the first prominent virtual currency millionaires in 2013, back when bitcoin was primarily known as a currency for online drug dealers.
More than a few people in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street saw the towering twins as the naïve — if chiseled — faces of the latest tulip bulb mania. Many still do.
But the soaring value of bitcoin in recent months is giving the brothers a moment of vindication, and quite a bit more than that: Their bitcoin stockpile was worth around $1.3 billion on Tuesday.
“We’ve turned that laughter and ridicule into oxygen and wind at our back,” Tyler Winklevoss said in an interview last week.
It is unclear how fleeting their vindication, or their fortune, will be. Many bitcoin aficionados are expecting a major correction to the recent spike in its value, which has gone from $1,000 for one coin at the beginning of the year to around $18,500 on Tuesday.
If nothing else, the growing fortune of the 36-year-old Winklevoss twins is a reminder that for all the small investors getting into bitcoin this year, the biggest winners have been a relatively small
The Golden Knights today will face another of the NHL’S elite when they host the first-place Washington Capitals at T-mobile Arena.
It’s an organization Vegas general manager George Mcphee is familiar with. He did, after all, construct the majority of the roster from the ground up.
Mcphee spent 17 years as general manager in Washington, taking over a struggling team in 1997 and in his first season constructing a team that reached the Stanley Cup Finals. The Capitals made 10 playoff appearances in his tenure and won seven division titles including a franchise-record 121-point season in 2009–10. It eventually came to an end with Mcphee being relieved of his duties after the Capitals missed the playoffs in 2014.
Mcphee, hired two summers ago in Vegas, is again having success.
Now 33 games into the inaugural season Mcphee has a team tied for first place in the Western Conference, three firstround prospects that appear to be flourishing in their respective development leagues, and 10 extra draft picks stockpiled over the next three years.
Mcphee spoke with the Sun on how his years in Washington helped lay the groundwork for his blueprint in building the Golden Knights. He also provides an update on the status of many facets of the franchise.
What is it like as you approach the first matchup against an organization that you know so well, with a lot of former co-workers?
What it’s like for me really is irrelevant. What’s important is our coaches and players are ready to play and see if we can win a game. I’m certainly looking forward to seeing some members of the equipment staff and medical staff — people that I worked with for a long time — but with respect to the game my feelings really don’t matter.
You were obviously with that organization for a long time. When you look back, what is your overall feeling of your time with the Washington Capitals?
It was a great experience. We took over a team that seemed to be an outpost at the time. They had only 2,900 season ticket (holders), below average ticket prices and not much success. It’s now a tremendous hockeytown that sells out every game. It’s been one heck of a team for the last 10 years.
What did you take from what you learned