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I believe the correct collective noun for Cameron and Taylor Winklevoss is ‘Winklevii’.

(However, it’s octopuses, not octopii, to save you some embarrassment when My Octopus Teacher cleans up at the Oscars.)

The Winklevii’s run-in with Mark Zuckerberg is a famous story that doesn’t need revisiting, although, over the years, the brothers haven’t shied away from getting a few digs in at their one-time potential business partner.

Having successfully sued Zuck, for which they were granted $65 million, the brothers invested $11 million in Bitcoin back in 2013.

As you can imagine, that investment has proven to be a very shrewd one, with the cryptocurrency’s price currently hovering around the $60 000 mark.

When they bought in, Bitcoin was going for around $8 a pop, and their current combined net worth is estimated to be in excess of $6 billion.

This week, they’re the cover stars of the latest Forbes magazine, under the headline ‘Revenge Of The Winklevii’, and it makes for an interesting read.

Here’s a summary of sorts, via Forbes Africa:

Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss didn’t grow up underdogs. But 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.

…the Winklevii, as they are widely known, have emerged as leaders of a technological movement whose core operating principle involves digitizing the records of all assets globally, decentralizing control and cutting out gatekeepers—including Facebook.

As things stand, Winklevoss Capital has invested in 25 digital asset startups, they own the digital art auction platform Nifty Gateway, and they’re very, very keen to take down the world’s foremost social media giant:

“The idea of a centralized social network is just not going to exist five or 10 years in the future,” Tyler predicts when asked about Facebook.

“There’s a membrane or a chasm between the old world and this new crypto-native universe. And we’re the conduit helping people transcend the offline into the online.”

I’m not sure they’re the ‘forgive and forget’ types.

If you want the real deep dive, read the full article here, or else you can settle for this summary of their empire below:

[source:forbes]