Winklevoss Twins

Bio

• Facebook; sued Mark for stealing “their” idea.
• According to Forbes "Meet the Crypto's Richest" from 5-2-2018 (just around the end of the bull market of 2017:

Tyler Winklevoss and his twin brother, Cameron, have waged, for now, one of the great comeback stories in American business. For years they were a punch line, the privileged jocks that Mark Zuckerberg left in the dust to build Facebook.

Famously, the Winklevoss twins, 36, accused Zuckerberg of stealing their idea for a social network, suing Facebook and settling for $65 million in Facebook stock and cash. They drew down on that war chest when they began investing in Bitcoin in a big way in 2012 — a move that drew yet more derision as Facebook shares continued exploding.

But the former Olympic rowers held on to their Bitcoin through the digital currency's violent ups and downs, including an 80% drop from 2013 to 2015, and sunk more money into other crypto-assets like Ether.

They also built a lucrative New York-based cryptocurrency exchange, Gemini, where investors can buy and sell digital currencies. Before opening the trading platform in 2015, the "Winklevii" worked closely with New York regulators. "Our philosophy is to ask for permission, not forgiveness," Cameron Winklevoss has said. Today Gemini sits alongside Coinbase as one of the few places where U.S residents can easily sell crypto for U.S. dollars. It recently handled $300 million of transactions daily and might have more long-term value than the twins' currency holdings. When it gained approval to operate as a financial services firm two years ago, it cleared a high barrier to entry, says Stan Miroshnik, CEO of the Element, an investment bank for cryptocurrency token sales. "That's a years-long and capital-intensive legal process."

Another recap on their rise to fame can be read here.

Occupations

• Gemini, first fully regulated BTC & ETH exchange. Co-founder Cameron Winklevoss is no longer a director at Gemini Europe, according to a Companies House filing made on October 12, 2022.
• One of (23-3-2020) the founding donors of HOLDpac.

Winklevoss Capital Management

Investments

• The Winklevosses say they own a similar amount (25-5-2020) of ETH and BTC.
• As of 8-2019 still invested in Blockstack and Tezos with their Winklevoss Capital Management, LLC.
• Bitclout; it's founder has mentioned this fund as an investor (23-3-2021).
• Bitinstant, investors
• BlockFi. invested (13-2-2020) in BlockFi.
• Oasis Network. Is mentioned as one of the investors in its docs (11-11-2020).
• Skale. Is on the list of supporters of Skale (31-7-2020).
• Staked. The Winklevoss twins and Pantera Capital have led the charge on a $4.5M fundraising round for Staked, a crypto firm that specializes in passive yields from staking Proof-of-Stake (PoS) coins; Staked performs the behind the scenes work for subscribing hedge funds and institutions. As of now, Stake services six coins: Tezos, Dash, Decred, Livepeer, Factom, and EOS.

Team

• Jane Lippencott, an investor with Winklevoss Capital. Is part of the guidance team at the bootcamp (21-4-2020) of Celo.