On 4 December, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, the famous Harward University twins who sued Mark Zuckerberg for claims of he stole their Facebook idea – have become the first bitcoin billionaires, based on reports from the Strait Times.
The 36-year-old pair lost the lawsuit to Zuckerberg but received a settlement of US 65 million dollars. Out of that, they used 11 million to invest into the bitcoin cryptocurrency platform in 2013. They have reportedly bought a percent of the bitcoin platform.
The investment yielded big gains since the value of bitcoin soared over 10,000 percent last week. This massive hike in value has meant their investment is valued at over a billion dollars as of 3 December.
The duo first learnt of the cryptocurrency platform in Ibiza during a holiday in 2012 and in 2015 they launched their own digital exchange called Gemini.
On 4 December, the value of Bitcoin was around its all-time high of 11,800 dollars after the US derivatives regulator allowed CME Group and CBOE Global Markets to list bitcoin futures.
Bitcoin has had a unpredictable journey with many warnings of it being a bubble.
The inventor of Bitcoin is the secretive Satoshi Nakamoto. Bitcoin is not backed by any central bank or real asset. It is a completely electronic form of currency.
Its recent success could be attribute to Japan making it a legal form of payment. Other countries too are now looking into incorporating bitcoin into legal channels.
(Inputs from the Strait Times)
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