The Winklevoss twins just filed to take their cryptocurrency exchange Gemini public on the Nasdaq under ticker GEMI, marking the latest chapter in one of Silicon Valley's most dramatic redemption arcs. From Harvard dorm room betrayal to Bitcoin billions, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss have transformed a $65 million Facebook settlement into a crypto empire—though one now bleeding $282 million in just six months.
As Circle $CRCL ( ▼ 8.98% ) and Bullish $BLSH ( ▼ 3.63% ) celebrate blockbuster IPO debuts with stocks surging 260%+ above listing prices, Gemini enters public markets carrying more baggage than a rowing team's equipment van. The question isn't whether the market wants another crypto exchange—it's whether investors can look past the Genesis debacle, SEC settlements, and widening losses to bet on crypto's most famous twins.
The Harvard Connection That Started Everything
Before they were Bitcoin billionaires, before the Olympic rowing, before the Hollywood portrayal in "The Social Network," Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss were just two 6'5" identical twins from Greenwich, Connecticut, teaching themselves HTML at age 13.
Their path to crypto royalty began in a Harvard dorm room in 2004. The twins, along with partner Divya Narendra, hired a sophomore named Mark Zuckerberg to code their social networking site, HarvardConnection. What happened next became Silicon Valley legend: Zuckerberg allegedly stalled, then launched "TheFacebook" using their concept.
The legal battle stretched four years. In 2008, the twins settled for $65 million—$20 million cash, $45 million in Facebook stock. By Facebook's 2012 IPO, their stake had doubled in value. Most saw it as consolation prize money. The Winklevoss twins saw it as seed capital.
In 2012, while Facebook conquered social media, the twins discovered Bitcoin trading at $8. Their thesis was elegant: if Bitcoin was "digital gold," it could eventually capture a fraction of gold's $7 trillion market cap.
Using their Facebook settlement, they quietly accumulated 70,000 Bitcoin—roughly 1% of all Bitcoin that would ever exist. Friends thought they were insane. The financial press mocked them. By 2013, when Bitcoin hit $1,000, they owned $70 million worth. Today, that stash is worth over $8 billion.
But the twins weren't content being passive investors. They saw Bitcoin's Achilles heel: no legitimate, regulated exchange for institutional investors. Wall Street wouldn't touch crypto on sketchy offshore platforms. So in 2014, they founded Gemini.