REVENGE OF THE WINKLEVIL

After losing an epic battle with Mark Zuckerberg over ownership of Facebook and being shunned in Silicon Valley, CAMERON and TYLER WINKLEVOSS are back— this time as budding Bitcoin billionaires at the center of the future of money, the creative economy and quite possibly a new operating model for Big Tech itself.

- MICHAEL DEL CASTILLO, SUSAN ADAMS AND ANTOINE GARA

IDENTICAL TWIN billionaires Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss saunter into their empty 17th-floor offices in Manhattan’s Flatiron district wearing designer high-tops, black jeans and matching sweatshirts made by the high-end streetwear brand Heron Preston. The sweatshirts—Cameron’s is red, Tyler’s white—are emblazoned with a NASA logo, which the twins picked because it echoes the space-exploration theme behind the brand of their seven-year-old cryptocurrency trading operation, Gemini. In addition to being the Zodiac sign symbolized by twins, it was the name of NASA’s second space mission—the one just prior to Apollo 11, which put the first man on the moon.

“We actually call our employees astronauts,” Cameron says. “We’re all astronauts building on the frontier of money and the frontier of art and the frontier of finance.” Accustomed to finishing his brother’s thoughts, Tyler chimes in: “We feel like we’re on a spaceship, exploring a new frontier.”

On this sunny March day, the spaceship is hitting warp speed. The price of Bitcoin is about to reach an all-time high of $58,000 (it sold for $8 in 2012 when the brothers began investing some $10 million in the digital currency), rocketing their combined net worth to $6 billion. Their latest investment, fast-growing Bitcoin lending giant BlockFi, just announced it has raised $350 million, valuing the company at $3 billion.