© Andrew Burton / Getty Images North America / AFPCameron Winklevoss (L) and his brother Tyler Winklevoss
According to the Telegraph, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss bought 1 percent of all currently mined Bitcoin for a price of $11 million in 2013. Since then, the $11 million crypto-bet has ballooned by almost 10,000 percent, making the twins the first Bitcoin billionaires.
The brothers first gained notoriety in 2006 after launching legal proceedings against Mark Zuckerberg, claiming the Facebook founder was a phony who stole their idea for the now-ubiquitous social media platform. In 2009, the Winklevoss twins received a settlement from Facebook valued at more than $65 million.
The twins used part of their settlement money to invest heavily in Bitcoin. In October 2015, the brothers launched Gemini, a Bitcoin exchange described by the Financial Times as "one of the first regulated and licensed digital currency exchanges in the developed world."
"We wanted to build an exchange that was similar to Nasdaq or NYSE for digital currency," Tyler told the FT in an interview. "We wanted something that both Wall Street and Main Street felt comfortable with."
The twins describe Bitcoin as "better than gold." The cryptocurrency, which was introduced in 2009 as an alternative to government-controlled fiat, has enjoyed a meteoric rise in value over the last year.
Now up more than 12-fold for the year, one Bitcoin was selling at below $1,000 on January 1. It remains to be seen whether Mark Zuckerberg will claim credit for the twins' wise investment.
Reader Comments
So what this means is that what gov corps stooges are facing is technology, and that means printing tech, and the reason for this is because the billionaire criminals ruling the governments of the planet (with their ill gotten wealth), have also stripped the governments of their monetary reason for existence; replaced that with private thievery which has all but eliminated currency in valuable coins, replacing the ones that did exist with pot metals: Always a sign of impending doom BTW.
Remember here now that if this were say 1960 you might decide to give your Grandkid a silver dollar since it's shiny and has a chance of survival, whereas a paper dollar would fall apart in the hands of a kid, and so you could just ask for change at any store and collect one. Not so any more, not so for the last 50 odd years, and that's really becoming a problem because the plans? Well they just ain't working so hot.
So now they have no real commodity backing anything like paper money, and now the paper is facing trial after trial by do it yourself types...if you're following along here...and why not; it's what they have been taught, it's not exactly like they aren't following the natural path of their leaders...but I digress...so paper is doomed by the theft of silver and gold from the coin base, and to compound the problem these idiots have launched into a war on paper thinking they could then simply invent money with digits from a computer, but surprise, surprise...too little too late.
See criminals are basically sadists. They could have successfully implemented a cryto currency long ago, they could have made a global wage base for everyone and no one would starve or freeze to death or be homeless, but no they didn't like that idea. They love torture and so they didn't go that route.
We are at the opening of a new epoch. I have no idea how long bitcoin and others will survive. I'd imagine a very long time.
I'm sure the powers that be are desperately working to somehow steal, rob, loot, or outlaw bitcoin but I'm afraid it's far too late for that one.