SimplyAbuDhabi XXXVII

108 | SIMPLY INFLUENTIAL They really, truly want to make their mark and build something great.” “ SIMPLY INFLUENTIAL | 109 Their pairing with Shrem was an odd one. He saw in them two things: money for his start-up and legitimacy. The Winklevoss name may have been mud in Silicon Valley, but in New York they were well connected. They could help bring bitcoin out of the shadows. The twins saw something bigger: a chance to recast themselves as men of substance. “They really, truly want to make their mark and build something great,” Mezrich says. “That’s how they sort of see themselves, as people who build something. They really want to make people look at them again, to reassess who they are.” And Zuckerberg was always there, taunting them with his success. He was unavoidable. Facebook had just floated with a valuation of more than $100bn. Zuckerberg had, undeniably, built something. Bitcoin was a risk. The cryptocurrency world attracted a certain type of anti-establishment zealotry. The Winklevoss twins? They were the establishment. They just believed bitcoin offered a more efficient way to run it. And so they dived in. After snapping up an estimated 1% of all bitcoin in circulation in 2012, the twins became missionaries. They talked to anyone who would listen about the virtues of the digital currency. Investment bankers. Captains of industry. Government officials. They did a national tour of sorts, giving presentations on private jets and in oak-panelled boardrooms about the future of money. Bitcoin, meanwhile, fluctuated wildly but generally ticked upward, from $7 to $100 to $1,000 and beyond. Some of the quirky, fringe characters so central to its foundation in the early days began to fall away. The main bitcoin exchange, Mt Gox, collapsed in 2014 after hackers stole $450m. US prosecutors shut down Silk Road, a key ‘dark web’ site where bitcoin was the currency of choice. Its founder was jailed for life for money laundering and other charges. The twins’ partnership with Shrem soured. After he blew through their money and the company lost a key licence, BitInstant shut down. The Winklevii ignored Shrem’s pleas for more money and, in 2014, he was arrested. He was sentenced to two years in prison for aiding an unlicensed money-transmitting business, charges that were related to Silk Road. When the price of bitcoin hit $20,000 a coin in late 2017, Wall Street woke up. Even Goldman Sachs said it would set up a bitcoin trading operation. Hundreds of billions of dollars flowed into bitcoin and rival digital currencies, of which there are now more than 2,000. The twins, apparently, haven’t sold a single coin. Based on the combined value of all bitcoin, that means that they are sitting on at least $1.5bn. And they have launched Gemini, which they hope will become the world’s main cryptocurrency exchange. How history remembers them won’t change unless their vision comes to fruition, if bitcoin does “disrupt” gold to become a more useful store of value and medium of exchange. If it doesn’t, they’ll remain the dumb jocks who got played by Zuckerberg. And this gets to the most shocking truth that emerges in Mezrich’s narrative. The 6ft 5in twins chiselled out of stone who grew up privileged, went to Harvard, competed in the Olympics and then became billionaires, see themselves as underdogs. Time and again, the theme rears its head. They want to be taken seriously, but are just too handsome, a too on-the-nose caricature of privilege, to be seen as anything else. Mezrich says: “It’s very hard to look at these guys and not feel like they’re starting so far ahead in so many ways, but that is really how they perceive themselves.” A film is already in the works, Mezrich says, with Armie Hammer, who played both twins in ‘The Social Network’ a decade ago, hopefully reprising the role. The story isn’t over yet.