IDENTICAL twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss were Mark Zuckerberg’s Harvard classmates in the early 2000s.
The pair, along with Divya Narendra, founded the social networking website ConnectU and claimed Zuckerberg stole their idea to create Facebook.
Here’s the story behind the billionaire twins.
Who are Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss?
The brothers were born in Southampton, New York in 1981 but were brought up in Greenwich, Connecticut.
In 2000, they started at Harvard University and majored in economics where they both achieved BA degrees and were members of the prestigious Porcellian Club and the Hasty Pudding club.
In 2002, Zuckerberg also started at Harvard and it wasn’t long before he developed programmes such as Coursematch which allowed students to discover who was attending a particular class and Facemash, a site that gave students the opportunity to vote on the attractiveness of their peers.
His talents were soon in demand as the Winklevoss brothers and Divya Nerendra needed Zuckerberg’s help to write code for a website that aimed to create a virtual community.
In Autumn 2003, they created a prototype called “HarvardConnection”, before asking Zuckerberg to help finish the site.
Tyler Winklevoss said: “We met Mark, and we talked to him, and we thought this guy seems like a winner.”
Zuckerberg started working on the site in November 2003, but by the beginning of 2004, the then-19-year-old had launched thefacebook.com – which at the time allowed anyone with a Harvard email to join, create a profile and connect with their fellow students.
In just one day, the site had around 1,500 registrants and within a month it had reached the campuses at Stanford, Yale and Columbia.
By mid-June, it had 150,000 users.
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In September 2004, the Winklevoss twins and Divya Nerendra filed a lawsuit in a Massachusetts federal court, claiming Zuckerberg had copied their idea and delayed the launch of their project in order to execute his own.
It took four years for a settlement to be made but the Winklevoss twins were awarded $65 million in both cash and Facebook stock.
The saga was turned into a biographical film in 2010 called The Social Network and follows all three men’s encounters at Harvard University and their subsequent lawsuits.
In 2008, the pair rowed for team USA at the Beijing Olympics and finished sixth.
What is Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss’ net worth?
In 2008, the twins reached a settlement with Mark Zuckerberg for $65 million – around $20 million in cash and $45 million in Facebook shares.
The duo then founded a company that provides angel investments to early-stage companies and entrepreneurs in 2012.
The company has invested in almost 100 projects and currently has 20 crypto-focused investments in its portfolio.
In April 2013, the brothers bought around $11 million worth of Bitcoin through Winklevoss Capital.
It’s believed they bought some coins for as little as $10 per coin.
At one point, Cameron and Tyler were rumored to own 1 per cent of all Bitcoin in circulation.
In 2013, the pair announced their involvement in BitInstant, one of the first American Bitcoin exchanges.
But Charlie Shrem, the former CEO, was arrested and sentenced to two years in prison for operating an unlicensed business.
Prosecutors said he traded Bitcoin that had been used for illegal drug transactions and money laundering.
BitInstant closed down in 2013 – the same year it launched.
The brother sued Shrem in 2018 and an undisclosed settlement was reached in 2019.
The pair then founded the cryptocurrency exchange Gemini in 2014.
Gemini has built a reputation as one of the safest places to buy, sell, and store cryptocurrency and was one of the first places to be licensed by the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYSDFS).
In 2016, Tyler Winklevoss said: “We see Bitcoin as potentially the greatest social network of all.”
In 2019, the Winklevoss twins invested in BlockFi, one of the first crypto lenders in the US.
Gemini then bought Nifty Gateway, an online auction for non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
After a series of successful ventures in a number of industries, the Winklevoss twins are believed to be worth more than $4 billion.
According to Forbes, Tyler and Cameron are worth $2.2 billion each.
