How Zuckerberg's Enemies became The Bitcoin Kings

The Bitcoin Billionaires (aka The Bitcoin Kings: How The Winklevoss Twins Changed Everything) is a story of revolution and redemption. A tale of obscene wealth and power. This is the truth about the Bitcoin Billionaires....

By now, the origins of Facebook are pretty well documented. Mark Zuckerberg meets with Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss about being the developer for their new social network idea. Mark agrees to help them build their website, but ends up stringing them along for months, whilst he secretly starts working on his own social network. When the twins realize what’s happened, they sue Zuckerberg for stealing their idea. Years later, the hugely successful Hollywood movie about Facebook’s origin would be set around this legal battle. But, have you ever wondered what happened next? 

Well, eventually the Winklevoss twins - or the Winklevii as they’re often known - were offered a $65 million dollar settlement by Facebook. Their lawyers urged them to take it. However whilst it was a vast amount of money, the Winklevoss twins said they wanted payment in Facebook stock instead. However for the Winklevii, this wasn’t so much about the money. They were from a wealthy family already. Facebook was a multi-billion dollar company by this point, and they knew it had even more growth to come, so they at least wanted a piece of it. That decision to get paid in stock instead of cash, turned out to be a very good move. When facebook had its IPO, the Winklevii’s shares became worth half a billion dollars.

But there was one problem: going up against Zuckerberg so publicly like this had ruined their reputation - they were now regarded as a bit of a joke in the media, and in the Facebook movie they came across as pretty spoiled and entitled. The Winklevoss twins wanted to use their money from Facebook's shares to invest in other Silicon Valley companies, but their attempts at being business investors went terribly, as their reputations were so tarnished thanks to Facebook.

Then on a beach in Ibiza, the Winklevoss twins heard about this new technology called Bitcoin. They heard how “Bitcoin is digital money, an electronic cash system that’s completely decentralized, so it cuts out the need for middlemen like banks or Visa and Mastercard." Given that the banks had just been bailed out by taxpayers after the 2008 market crash, it was easy to see some of the benefits of a decentralized system of money. Bitcoin was shrouded in mystery though, as bitcoin was created by a guy called Satoshi Nakamoto, who disappeared without a trace.

The Winklevoss twins would later invest in Charlie Shrem's bitcoin company called BitInstant, which helped people buy Bitcoin in an easy way. Basically, people paid the company normal fiat cash, and BitInstant would send them bitcoin, in return for a small commission fee. Once the Winklevoss twins became investors, they also began buying bitcoin. This video of the bitcoin billionaires looks at the crazy story of what happened next, once the Winklevii became entangled in the world of crypto, bitcoin, web 3 and more.