The story of the Winklevoss brothers, the First Bitcoin Billionaires

The first billionaires in the world to make a fortune on bitcoins were the American twin brothers Cameron and Taylor Winklevoss. The brothers' fortune is estimated at 100 thousand bitcoins, which is equivalent to $ 1.17 billion. The brothers received funds for their first investment as a result of a lawsuit with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, whom the Winklevoss accused of stealing their idea.

Source: Telegraph

Famous rowers, entrepreneurs, twins and bitcoin enthusiasts Winklevoss brothers are building two bitcoin companies and own 1% of all bitcoins already mined. As Tyler Winklevoss said, "We eat, sleep, breathe Bitcoin."

In 2013, the Winklevoss brothers acquired 1% of the global stock of this cryptocurrency for $ 11 million, when the cost of one bitcoin was $ 120. Since then, the cryptocurrency exchange rate has increased by 10,000%, and the brothers' fortune has grown to one billion dollars. It is assumed that the Winklevoss became the first billionaires in the world to make their fortune on bitcoin, if you do not take into account the creator of bitcoin, hiding under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto.

The Winklevoss brothers and their Harvard classmate Divya Narendra (pictured above in the center) in December 2002 decided to create a closed social network HarvardConnection for students. In November 2003, they hired Mark Zuckerberg, explaining the idea to him and providing the texts of the developed program code. For two months, Zuckerberg avoided contact with the Winklevoss, working with his future partner Eduardo Saverin to create his own social network, and on February 6, 2004, they launched a website thefacebook.com . The Winklevosses appealed to the university administration with a claim about the theft of intellectual property, but the administration recommended them to go to court.

If you've seen Fincher's film "The Social Network", then remember how the twins sued Mark Zuckerberg on charges of stealing the idea of Facebook. In the film, the rich students looked like a laughing stock when the court decided the case in favor of Zuckerberg. However, the brothers were still not a blunder…

As a result of the litigation, the parties managed to reach a settlement agreement. According to a number of media reports, the head of Facebook then paid the brothers about $ 65 million in compensation. Part of this money went to invest in cryptocurrency.

Also in 2013, the brothers invested $ 1.5 million in the BitInstant bitcoin payment processing system, and later launched their own financial index to track the Winkdex cryptocurrency exchange rate. In March, the Winklevosses were going to open an exchange-traded bitcoin investment fund, but could not get permission from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Winklevoss deliberately do not sell cryptocurrency, indicating the long-term investment. They call Bitcoin an "improved version of gold."