What Is the Winklevoss Twins’ Net Worth? Gemini’s Owners Wealth in 2024

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss are the two well-known American entrepreneurs famously portrayed in the biopic The Social Network, which depicted the founding days of the social media platform Facebook.

Today, the Winklevoss twins are prominent members of the crypto community. They are claimed to be the world’s first Bitcoin billionaires and launched a crypto exchange called Gemini.

What is the Winklevoss twins’ net worth today? Let’s find out.

Table of Contents Table of Contents

1. Key Takeaways
2. How Did the Winklevoss Twins Make Their Money?
3. What Is the Winklevoss Twins’ Net Worth?
4. What Do Winklevoss Twins Own?
5. The Bottom Line
6. FAQs
7. References

Show Full Guide

Table of Contents

1. Key Takeaways
2. How Did the Winklevoss Twins Make Their Money?
3. What Is the Winklevoss Twins’ Net Worth?
Show Full Guide
4. What Do Winklevoss Twins Own?
5. The Bottom Line
6. FAQs
7. References

How Did the Winklevoss Twins Make Their Money?

Early Ventures: Facebook Dispute

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss were born on August 21, 1981. The twins were raised in Greenwich, Connecticut.

In 2000, they enrolled at Harvard University, where they both majored in Economics. While studying at Harvard, the twins competed in the rowing coxless pairs at the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

The Winklevoss Twins are famous for their role in creating social media giant Facebook, as depicted in the biopic The Social Network. The Twins have long claimed that Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg stole their idea for a social networking site.

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss had been working on a social network called Harvard Connection to find a way to connect students at Harvard and other universities. According to court documents, the twins filed a copyright claim in September 2004 alleging that Zuckerberg copied portions of the source code written for Harvard Connection and then used the copied code to launch thefacebook.com.

However, a district court in California dismissed the case and ordered the parties to mediate their dispute.

The dispute was settled in 2009. According to The Guardian, Facebook paid the Winklevoss twins $65 million to settle the lawsuit. The twins received $20 million in cash and $45 million in Facebook stock (about 1.25 million shares at the time).

According to Ben Mezrich, author of The Accidental Billionaires (the book that was adapted into the movie The Social Network), the decision to take the majority of the settlement in Facebook stock was “one of the best decisions they ever made.”

“Six years after the IPO, the share price had quintupled, and the twins’ holdings are now estimated at about $500 million,” said Mezrich in a 2019 article for Boston magazine.

“But the brothers hadn’t taken such a large chunk of the settlement in stock because of what it might be worth — they’d taken stock because they truly believed they should be part of Facebook,” added Mezrich.

Twins Invest Facebook Proceeds in Crypto

After Harvard, the Winklevoss brothers joined Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford, where they completed an MBA course in 2010.

The twins went on to use their Facebook windfall to set up a venture capital firm called Winklevoss Capital Management in 2012.

The same year, the twins invested about $10 million into Bitcoin (BTC) when the price of cryptocurrency was about $8 per token. According to Forbes, the Winklevoss twins’ Bitcoin holding helped their combined net worth surge to $6 billion by April 2021.

In 2015, the Winklevoss brothers doubled down on their crypto bet by launching a cryptocurrency exchange called Gemini.

What Is the Winklevoss Twins’ Net Worth?

According to Forbes, Cameron Winklevoss’s net worth was $2.7 billion, and Tyler Winklevoss’s net worth was $2.7 billion as of May 30, 2024.

The Winklevoss twins’ combined net worth in 2024 stood at $5.4 billion.

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The majority of their wealth came from the crypto industry through Bitcoin holdings, the Gemini crypto exchange, and other investments.

According to Forbes, the twins own an estimated 70,000 Bitcoins worth $4.72 billion (at a BTC price of about $67,000 as of May 30, 2024).

Data on Messari showed that since launching in 2015, Gemini has grown to become the 35th largest centralized crypto exchange in the world based on 24-hour trade volume.

When Gemini raised a $400 million growth equity round in November 2021, the company was valued at $7.1 billion.

Wealth Fluctuations

As Bitcoin is the primary source of Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss’s wealth, its market performance will affect their net worth.

Since buying their first Bitcoin for about $8 per token in 2012, the price of the cryptocurrency has increased about 837,400% to over $67,000 as of May 30, 2024.

Higher Bitcoin prices will result in an appreciation of the net worth of the Winklevoss twins.

What Do Winklevoss Twins Own?

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss’s Companies

The Winklevoss twins founded the Gemini crypto exchange in 2014. As of May 2024, Cameron Winklevoss is the company’s president, while Tyler Winklevoss is its chief executive.

The brothers also co-founded a venture capital firm called Winklevoss Capital in 2012 and a social networking site ConnectU (originally called Harvard Connection) in 2004.

In 2008, Cameron Winklevoss co-founded another social networking platform called Guest of a Guest.

Investments

Over the years, the Winklevoss twins have invested in several early-stage startups in the tech and crypto industry.

Through Winklevoss Capital, the twins invested in blockchain gaming company Animoca Brands, medical marijuana delivery firm Eaze, decentralized storage network Filecoin, crypto research firm Messari, Bitcoin scaling solution Stacks, privacy crypto ZCash, and now-defunct crypto lending firm BlockFi, among others.

Through Gemini, the Winklevoss twins have invested in synthetic dollar protocol Ethena, blockchain interoperability protocol LayerZero, and metaverse company LandVault, among others.

Gemini also acquired an NFT marketplace called Nifty Gateway in 2019. Nifty Gateway facilitated the most expensive NFT to date when The Merge, the NFT collection created by digital artist PAK, was sold for $91 million.

In 2024, the Winklevoss twins invested $4.5 million worth of Bitcoin in Real Bedford FC, an English football club.

Real Estate

According to news reports, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss bought a New York-based penthouse in 2014 for $14.5 million. The twins listed the property in 2022 for $16.95 million.

In 2012, the twins bought an 8,000-square-foot property in Los Angeles, California, for $18 million.

Philanthropy

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss were named in the “Faces of Crypto Philanthropy” list in 2023. According to The Giving Block, the twins donated $10 million to Greenwich Country Day School.

The brothers also donated 25 Bitcoins each to The Bitcoin Water Trust, a trust fund for clean water projects.

The Bottom Line

The Winklevoss twins are known for their habit of being at the right place at the right time, be it during the birth of the social phenomenon Facebook or investing in Bitcoin when the crypto was still priced at single digits.

Their entrepreneurial spirit, foresight, and good luck have made them Bitcoin billionaires today.

FAQs