Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the identical twins who claimed Mark Zuckerberg stole their idea for Facebook, are the world’s first Bitcoin billionaires.
Tyler and Cameron were students at Harvard University with Mr Zuckerberg and scandalously won a $65m payout from the social network in 2008 after they claimed Facebook was their idea. They used some of that cash ($14 million) to invest in Bitcoin in 2013. The brothers purchased 1 percent of all Bitcoin that was in circulation at the time.
From that point forward, the digital currency has expanded in value by 10,000 percent, making the 36-year-old brothers billionaires. They apparently depicted the digital currency as "better than gold". When compared to gold, Bitcoin shares all a similar nine foundational traits, including scarcity, durability and portability, and it matches or beats gold on all these traits.
The pair initially learned of Bitcoin while on vacation in Ibiza in 2012, and in 2015 they launched a digital currency marketplace, known as Gemini, that enables investors to purchase, sell and store Bitcoins.
“We wanted to build an exchange that was similar to Nasdaq or NYSE for digital currency,” Tyler Winklevoss said at the time.
“We wanted something that both Wall Street and Main Street felt comfortable with.”