Visionary twins make first billion
UNITED STATES: The American twin brothers who accused Mark Zuckerberg of stealing their idea for the Facebook social network saw their bitcoin fortune surpass US$1.7 billion for the first time yesterday.
Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss are believed to own about 92,000 bitcoins, which were worth US$1.7b (NZ$2.49b) yesterday. They bought their holding for about US$11 million in 2012 and 2013. If the price of the digital currency continues to rise at the same rate, their fortune will surpass Zuckerberg’s US$72b (NZ$105b) fortune before the end of the year.
The former Olympic rowers, now 36, were at Harvard University when they had the idea of building a social network and hired Zuckerberg, a software engineer, to build it. Zuckerberg ultimately left to set up his own social network, and his company is now worth US$520b (NZ$761b).
The twins settled a court case against Zuckerberg for about US$65m in 2011.
The brothers re-emerged in public view in 2013 as bitcoin entrepreneurs. They have set up several businesses linked to the cryptocurrency, as well as buying up the largest publicly disclosed stake in bitcoin.
It is likely that the secretive inventor of bitcoin, who goes by the name Satoshi Nakamoto, has a larger holding, as do some software engineers who were involved in the early stages of its development.
When the twins divulged their holding in 2013, Tyler said: ‘‘We have elected to put our money and faith in a mathematical framework that is free of politics and human error. We could be totally wrong, but we are curious to see this play out.’’