The Winklevoss twins who sued Mark Zuckerberg for allegedly stealing the idea for Facebook, have become the world’s first Bitcoin billionaires.
Four years ago, the brothers, Tyler and Cameron, used $11 million from the payout they received from their Facebook lawsuit to take a gamble on Bitcoin.
Turning $11 million into $1 billion
The original investment exploded by nearly 10,000 percent following the price surge last week. This has made the Winklevoss twins the recipients of the first billion dollar return from Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency. It also represents an important milestone for the asset which continues to be quite controversial.
Last week, Bitcoin saw an outstanding spike in its value, having shot up to a high point of $11,395 after jumping by over $1,000 in one day alone. That price fell just slightly soon afterward, but it represented a rising trend in the cryptocurrency’s growth over the last while. This, despite ongoing concerns that the crypto is vulnerable to criminal exploitation and may represent a threat to financial stability.
Still, the most recent rise in Bitcoin’s value made a number of new millionaires out of its earliest backers. The Winklevoss twins continue to be the only billionaires the crypto has made so far.
The Winklevoss Twins Bought at about $120
In 2008, the Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss won a $65 million payout from Facebook after having claimed it was their idea. In March 2013, they took $11 million from that amount to buy about 1 percent of all the Bitcoin in the world. At that time, it was worth approximately $120.
Back then, they knew they wouldn’t be selling any of the cryptocurrency for quite some time and that they would need to be in it “for the long haul” in order to make any real money. They felt strongly that Bitcoin’s growth would help to boost financial openness.
“We were fascinated from day one,” said Tyler Winklevoss at the time. He suggested that after having gone through five years of court battles with Facebook, he was ready to place his focus in a new direction. “At the time we were just re-immersing ourselves inside the tech world, getting into the trenches again.”