As Big Investors Emerge, Bitcoin Gets Ready for its Close-Upby NATHANIEL POPPER AND PETER LATTMAN
Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss have been many things in a short time: Olympic rowers. Nemeses of Mark Zuckerberg. Characters on “The Simpsons.” Now they can add a new label: bitcoin moguls.
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The Winklevii — as they are popularly known — say they own nearly 1 percent of that, or some $11 million.
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Now mainstream investments in the digital money are starting to emerge. On Thursday, a group of venture capitalists, including Andreessen Horowitz, announced that they were funding a bitcoin-related company, OpenCoin.
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But the 6-foot-5 Winklevii were unfazed by the latest tumult. Indeed, the brothers said they used the low prices to buy more. They argue that bitcoin will have much further to soar once a broader audience sees its virtues: a unit of exchange that can be moved around the world at the click of a button without requiring any payments to Western Union or American Express.
“People say it’s a Ponzi scheme, it’s a bubble,” said Cameron Winklevoss. “People really don’t want to take it seriously. At some point that narrative will shift to ‘virtual currencies are here to stay.’ We’re in the early days.”
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For their part, the Winklevoss twins have used some of their bitcoin to pay for the services of a Ukrainian computer programmer who has worked on the site of their venture capital firm.
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In addition to the purchase of bitcoins, they also say they have invested in a bitcoin-related company, but declined to disclose which one.
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“It has been four years and it has yet to be discredited as a viable alternative to fiat currency,” said Tyler Winklevoss. “We could be totally wrong, but we are curious to see this play out a lot more.”
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http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/04/11/as-big-investors-emerge-bitcoin-gets-ready-for-its-close-up/
