After “The Social Network” movie thrust the Winklevoss twins into the limelight in 2010, the brothers soon gained fame in the crypto space as well. These early Bitcoin investors are the founders of one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges by trading volume, Gemini.
This article looks at the background of Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, dives into the Facebook lawsuit, and discusses their transition to cryptocurrency, including their crypto ventures.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
• Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss are entrepreneurs, early Bitcoin investors, and founders of regulated crypto exchange, Gemini.
• As of the latest estimates, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss have a combined net worth of approximately $5.4 billion.
• Gemini grew to become one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges, supporting over 100 digital currencies.
• The Winklevoss twins co-founded ConnectU and later settled a lawsuit with Zuckerberg over Facebook’s creation.
Who are the Winklevoss twins?
Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss were born in August 1981 in Southampton, New York. Their parents, Howard E. Winklevoss and Carol (née Leonard) raised the twins and their older sister Amanda in Greenwich, Connecticut. Howard served the University of Pennsylvania as an adjunct professor of actuarial science.
The twins shared an inseparable bond from a young age. Tyler (right-handed) is reportedly more analytical, while Cameron (left-handed) is more creative.
At 13, the “mirror-image” twins taught themselves HTML (HyperText Markup Language) and started a webpage company that developed websites for local businesses.
Education
The twins attended Greenwich Country Day School and later joined Brunswick School, a private boys’ high school in Greenwich.
While their parents forced the twins to learn piano at age six, they ended up loving classical music and playing for the next 12 years until they were 18. They also enjoyed classical literature and learned Greek and Latin in high school. The brothers started rowing at 14 in senior school and co-founded the rowing club in their high school.
Cameron and Tyler were accepted into Harvard College in 2000, where they graduated with an economics major in 2004. They then joined Saïd Business School at Oxford University in 2009 and attained MBAs in 2010.
Time at Harvard
The twins joined Harvard University, becoming members of the Porcellian Club and the Hasty Pudding Club. They also rowed at the university for four years and were part of the crew nicknamed ‘’God Squad’’.
The Winklevoss twins participated in men’s varsity heavyweight with the God Squad. They joined the Havard Crimsons and led their crew to set undefeated domestic records and win the Eastern Sprint, the IRA (Intercollegiate Rowing Association) Championships, and the Harvard-Yale race in their senior year.
They later participated in the Lucerne Rowing World Cup in Switzerland and came in 6th. The Crimson Eight competed in Henley and placed second after the Dutch team.
It was during their time in Harvard when the twins started planning a social networking platform for students. Here’s a quick summary of how it unfolded:
In late 2002, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss teamed up with Divya Narendra to create a social networking platform, initially called HarvardConnection. The project aimed at connect Harvard students, with the broader ambition of expanding to other schools across the country.
- In early 2003, they launched a prototype of HarvardConnection for their fellow Harvard students.
- Later in 2003, the twins recruited Sanjay Mavinkurve, a programmer and friend at Harvard, to help build the social network framework. However, Sanjay left the project for Google after graduating.
- After Sanjay’s departure, the twins and Divya Narendra hired Victor Gao, another programmer, to continue developing HarvardConnection. Gao opted not to become a partner and worked for hire. He was paid $400 for his work before leaving the project in the fall of 2003.
- In early 2004, they rebranded HarvardConnection to ConnectU, which quickly gained some popularity as a social networking platform that allowed users to join “Clubs” and connect with others within their domain.
- Before he left, Gao referred a fellow Harvard student, Mark Zuckerberg, to the ConnectU founders. The Winklevoss twins and Narendra brought on Zuckerberg as the project’s programmer from November 2003 to February 2004.
Net worth
According to Forbes, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss have an estimated combined net worth of $5.4 billion. As of Sept. 3, 2024, both brothers are ranked 1260th on Forbes’ Billionaires list.
Achievements
The Winklevoss twins participated in the 2007 Pan-American Games, winning silver in the men’s coxless four and gold in the eights event.
Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss were members of the United States Olympic Team at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China. They competed in the men’s coxless pairs event and finished sixth out of fourteen competitors.
In 2009, Cameron Winklevoss placed third in the men’s coxless four event at the Rowing World Cup in Switzerland.
Philanthropy
In 2019, the brothers donated $10 million to Greenwich Country Day School in honor of their sister Amanda. It was the largest philanthropic alumni donation in the school’s history at the time.
They also matched the first 50 BTC donated to the Bitcoin Water Trust project, a nonprofit that HODLs Bitcoin to fund clean water projects.
Personal life
Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss started a rock band called Mars Junction as a pandemic project in 2020. Tyler started by playing keys but switched to lead singer to challenge himself, and Cameron played the guitar for the band.
The twins started the band to feel closer to their sister Amanda, who passed away in 2002. The band has gone on tour and performs covers of rock songs that are nostalgic to the Winklevoss brothers.
The twins are unmarried and keep their private life away from the media.
Public appearances and media
Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss were dramatized as characters in the biopic “The Social Network,” a 2010 film based on Ben Mezrich’s book “The Accidental Billionaires”. Aaron Sorkin wrote the script, and David Fincher directed the film, which was about Facebook’s launch under Mark Zuckerberg.
The twins are also the main protagonists in Ben Mezrich’s sequel to “The Accidental Billionaires, Bitcoin Billionaires: A True Story of Genius, Betrayal, and Redemption”. Tyler and Cameron were also characters in an episode of The Simpsons as a team in the Olympic rowing team.
What do they do?
Following their early work with ConnectU, a failed social media venture, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss shifted their focus to entrepreneurship and investment. They also engaged in a legal battle with Mark Zuckerberg, which we will discuss later in this article.
In 2008, the twins received a hefty settlement from Facebook. With this significant capital and their interest in emerging technologies, the Winklevoss brothers began exploring new opportunities in the tech and finance sectors.
In 2012, they launched Winklevoss Capital Management. The firm primarily focuses on industries such as fintech, education, and digital assets and provides strategic support to entrepreneurs to grow their ventures.
By 2014, their interest in cryptocurrency led them to found Gemini, a regulated cryptocurrency exchange. Tyler Winklevoss serves as the CEO, and Cameron Winklevoss is the president.
The Facebook lawsuit: The Winklevoss vs. Mark Zuckerberg
The Winklevoss twins gained fame after “The Social Network” dramatized their legal battle with Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Origin of the dispute
In 2003, Cameron, Tyler, and their roommate Divya Narendra approached Mark Zuckerberg, a fellow Harvard student, to help them build their social networking site, HarvardConnection.
The Winklevoss twins allege that Zuckerberg entered a verbal contract with them, promising to work on the project in exchange for equity. The trio communicated with Zuckerberg through emails and physical meetings from November 2003 to February 2004, according to a Sept. 2004 report by the Daily Free Press.
Meanwhile, Zuckerberg was working on TheFacebook.com, which later became Facebook, and launched the site in February 2004. The Winklevoss twins and Narendra learned about this development two days after the launch through The Harvard Crimson site. Soon after, they sent Zuckerberg a cease and desist letter.
HarvardConnection launched a few months later as ConnectU but wasn’t as popular as Facebook. The ConnectU founders filed an intellectual property lawsuit against Zuckerberg in 2004, claiming that Zuckerberg stole their idea and used their website’s source code.
The legal battle dragged on for almost four years.
Settlement details
In February 2008, the Winklevoss twins and Facebook settled out of court. Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss received $65 million ($20 million in cash and $45 million worth of Facebook pre-IPO shares) as a settlement.
Despite both sides agreeing to keep the settlement details confidential, the law firm representing ConnectU disclosed the amount in a newsletter it sent out. This information was later reported by the Recorder, a San Francisco-based legal publication.
In March 2008, the brothers filed another lawsuit to undo the settlement so that they could file their original case against Zuckerberg. They argued that Facebook had misled them regarding the value of the shares and shortchanged them. However, the court refused to nullify the settlement.
How did the Winklevoss twins transition to cryptocurrency?
Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss were introduced to Bitcoin in 2012 while on holiday in Ibiza after finishing their MBA in Oxford. At the time, Bitcoin was still in its infancy, and traditional investors weren’t taking it seriously.
Using the cash proceeds from their Facebook lawsuit, the twins bought $11 million worth of Bitcoin when the price was around $8 per unit.
In 2013, the duo invested $1.5 million in seed funding into the Bitcoin payment processor BitInstant, a startup by Charlie Shrem.
However, BitInstant was linked to money laundering during the investigation of the Silk Road drug market site and was consequently shut down. BitInstant CEO Charlie Shrem was arrested and charged with money laundering.
Founding Gemini
After the BitInstant debacle, Tyler and Cameron took a hands-on approach and made it their mission to create a safe and regulated cryptocurrency investment platform.
In 2014, they launched Gemini, which started as an exchange platform that solely facilitated the buying and selling of Bitcoin. Gemini was one of the first digital currency exchanges to be regulated and licensed by the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYSDFS).
As the crypto market grew, Gemini started supporting altcoins and featuring more than 100 digital currencies, developing into one of the best cryptocurrency exchanges.
In 2018, Gemini introduced the Gemini dollar, a stablecoin backed by the U.S. dollar 1:1.
Gemini launched its Gemini Earn program to retail users in 2021 in partnership with Digital Currency Group’s (DCG) Genesis Global Trading, the exchange’s primary lender. This allowed investors to earn up to 8% interest on cryptocurrency they held in the program.
In November 2022, Genesis halted customer withdrawals following the FTX collapse because the lender lacked sufficient liquid assets to meet demand. At the time, Genesis owed 340,000 Gemini Earn investors approximately $900 million in digital assets.
Gemini terminated its partnership with Genesis and ended the Earn program. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged Gemini and Genesis for offering unregistered securities to the public under the Gemini Earn program.
Views on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies
“We have elected to put our money and faith in a mathematical framework that is free of politics and human error,”
Tyler Winklevoss told the New York Times.
When the Winklevoss twins learned about Bitcoin in 2012, they were impressed by its revolutionary technology and thought it had a lot of promise. They were intrigued by the digital asset, especially its underlying blockchain technology, and became convinced that Bitcoin was the future of money. T
hey invested heavily early on, and when they realized there wasn’t a safe way to buy and sell Bitcoin, they developed Gemini.
The Winklevoss twins are significant cryptocurrency investors who have invested in different crypto projects. In 2019, they bought Nifty Gateway, a platform for non-fungible tokens under Gemini.
The Winklevoss twins joined a coalition with Ripple founder Brad Garlinghouse and Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong to support a pro-crypto US presidential candidate in the 2024 elections.
The cryptocurrency powerhouses pledge $78 million to political action. This coalition hopes to shape policies in favor of cryptocurrencies.
How does the Winklevoss Twins’ Gemini shape up against Brian Armstrong’s Coinbase? Find out in our comprehensive Gemini vs. Coinbase guide.
Other ventures by the twins
In addition to the Gemini exchange, the Winklevoss twins have stakes in several other ventures.
Winklevoss Capital
Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss founded Winklevoss Capital in 2012 as a firm that invests seed funding and infrastructure across multiple asset classes. The tech entrepreneurs invest in early-stage fintech, education, and gaming startups. Notable investments include Shinesty, Teachable, Flexport, and many more.
Investments in other startups and companies
The Winklevoss twins have also invested in AI technology through the startups Metaphysic.ai and Holocron Technologies.
In April 2024, the twins announced they had become co-owners of Bedford FC, “creating the first ever football club powered by Bitcoin” after investing BTC worth $4.5 million in the English football club.
The Winklevoss twins: Early Bitcoin billionaires
Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss were among the first big investors in Bitcoin, which gave them a solid foothold in the industry. Their drive to success shows in everything that they do, whether it’s rowing in the Olympics, starting a social network in Havard, or playing in a rock cover band in their forties. Overall, the twins are two of the most notable figures in the short history of the asset class and will likely play key roles in its future as well.
Frequently asked questions
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