When you think of the Winklevoss twins - Tyler Winklevoss and Cameron Winklevoss, one of two things you probably come to mind: 1) they have helped create Facebook, or 2) they are billionaires Bitcoin .
After settling with Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook for $ 20 million and 1.2 million Facebook shares, they have invested a substantial part of their wealth in Bitcoin , after discovering the cryptocurrency earlier.
In 2013, they have reported about one percent of all BTC in circulation at the time, which would be about 0.6-0.7 percent of all coins in circulation today. (Some say the twins own 120,000 coins, worth just over a billion dollars at the time of writing.)
But according to a new interview, the Winklevoss twins, who both manage the Gemini cryptocurrency exchange, are also Ethereum whales .
Winklevoss twins hold a "material" amount of ETH
Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss have online personalities primarily focused on promoting Bitcoin , with several of their recently crypto-viral tweets, but apparently they have a large stake in Ethereum to match their Bitcoin holdings .
Speaking to Camila Russo, a former Bloomberg reporter who has become an Ethereum- focused media personality who operates Defiant , Cameron Winklevoss said:
“We certainly have a lot of ether. They are large and it is a material quantity. Yes, big enough […] A few years ago, we made a concerted effort to buy a lot of ether. "
The exact size of their investment has not been revealed, but Cameron added that their Ethereum holdings are in the "same galaxy" as their Bitcoin holdings .
This could mean one of two things: 1) they hold approximately $ 1 billion in cryptocurrency, or 2) they hold approximately one percent of all ETH in circulation, which would represent a cache of approximately 230 million of dollars.
Why are they optimistic about Ethereum?
Anyway, be it ~ $ 1 billion or $ 230 million in ETH , why are they so optimistic? What justifies putting a significant part of their wealth in cryptocurrency?
They say it comes down to a lot of decentralized finance - better known as DeFi.
In the interview with Russo, Cameron said he thought DeFi is "a new view [for blockchain], a new type of system for which Bitcoin has led the way." Decentralized finance speaks of their general vision of crypto, he added, speaking on behalf of him and his brother.
This comment is reminiscent of that of Ryan Selkis, director general of the cryptography researcher and data provider Messari.
As stated by PassionCrypto previously, Selkis noted that he was looking to accumulate Ethereum because he thinks that the introduction of the DeFi use case gives “ ETH a higher cap” to get closer to where it reached $ 1,400 and approximately 0.125 BTC in 2018.
