Winklevoss Twins Say Futures Are Starting Gun for Bitcoin
The Winklevoss brothers said in 2013 that they owned almost $11 million worth of bitcoins.
(Bloomberg) -- Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, thought to be among the largest holders of bitcoin, said the advent of futures is just the beginning of a phase of greater acceptance for the cryptocurrency that is often derided as a bubble.
“We think it’s the starting gun to a whole new phase of liquidity and price discovery and sophisticated entrance to the market,” Tyler Winklevoss said during a Bloomberg Television interview.
The Winklevoss twins are co-founders of the Gemini exchange, which Cboe Global Markets Inc. is using as the basis for the daily settlement for the bitcoin futures that began trading this week.
The Winklevoss brothers said in 2013 that they owned almost $11 million worth of bitcoins. If they retained that stake it would be valued at about $950 million today, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The ranking calculates they each have a $1.1 billion fortune as of Monday after taking into account other assets.
Cameron Winklevoss, said in an interview last week that the cryptocurrency’s blazing gains this year are just the start. He predicted it will rise as much as 20-fold as investors come to view it as an upgrade to gold. The brothers didn’t comment Tuesday on the price.
“We think bitcoin is like gold 2.0,” Tyler Winklevoss said Tuesday. “So whatever your reasons for investing in gold -- whether it’s scarce, durability, portability, fungibility -- we think that bitcoin matches or beats gold across the board.”
--With assistance from Alix Steel David Westin Pamela Roux Tom Metcalf and Julie Hyman
To contact the reporter on this story: Lily Katz in New York at lkatz31@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jeremy Herron at jherron8@bloomberg.net, Dave Liedtka, Andrew Dunn
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