Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss fought a famous legal battle against Mark Zuckerberg over the beginnings of Facebook. Now they predict the demise of the social network.
Harvard-educated twins, whom Armie Hammer portrayed as losers in the 2010 film “The Social Network,” have become billionaires thanks to their bold investments in Bitcoin and other controversial cryptocurrencies.
Encouraged by the rise in digital money prices, as large Tesla companies in Goldman Sachs welcome it, the couple is now raising the claim, claiming that “centralized” social networks like Facebook aren’t long for this world.
“The idea of a centralized social network won’t exist for five or ten years in the future,” Tyler Winklevoss told Forbes in a profile Monday when asked about Facebook. “There is a membrane or chasm between the old world and this new crypto-native universe. And we are the conduit that helps people transcend what is not connected to the internet.
The 39-year-old twins known as the “Winklevii” have filled their portfolios with startups trying to decentralize services dominated by tech titans like Facebook, Microsoft and Google alongside a digital art platform that is at the heart of the recent NFT mania, according to Forbes.
The twins reportedly entered this universe nearly a decade ago after winning a $ 65 million deal in their legal battle with Zuckerberg, whom they accused of stealing their idea from a social network.
They started buying Bitcoin in 2012 after receiving advice from some “early adopters” on the island of Ibiza, a Mediterranean holiday, according to Forbes. Now, Bitcoin and the so-called blockchain technology behind it are driving a business empire that gave them a combined net worth of more than $ 6 billion last month, according to the outlet.
One of its biggest hits is Nifty Gateway, which has helped fuel the market explosion of non-consumable tokens or NFTs, digital assets whose ownership is stored in a blockchain ledger.
The platform has seen an explosion of interest in its NFT “drops” from artists like Beeple, who just sold a testimonial at Christie’s auction house for $ 69 million, according to Forbes.
“We’re now earning $ 4 million in five minutes” for versions that would have grossed $ 50,000 a year ago, Cameron Winklevoss told Forbes.
Nifty Gateway was purchased in 2019 by Gemini, Winklevii’s cryptocurrency exchange that shares its name with NASA’s second space mission. The twins are so dedicated to the subject of space exploration that they call Gemini employees “astronauts,” they told Forbes.
According to reports, the couple has also supported companies that want to create applications and services whose users are not subject to the whims of giant corporations.
One such company is Filecoin, which pays people in cryptocurrency to rent space on their hard drives as an alternative to centralized cloud storage, Forbes reports. There’s also Stacks, an application platform that reportedly drives several projects, including a decentralized messaging service called Pravica.
“Within the next decade, you’ll see social protocols take off and people build decentralized forms of these services,” Tyler Winklevoss told Forbes.
Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.