Molly
Jane Zuckerman is the head of news at Cointelegraph. The views
expressed here are her own and do not necessarily represent the views of
Cointelegraph. This article contains spoilers.
The irony of a book about the Winklevoss twins’
journey into cryptocurrency — which stresses over and over again how
important it has been to their legacy to eclipse their past dealings
with Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg — getting published less than a month
before Facebook’s secretive cryptocurrency project was unveiled to the world is almost too obvious a way to begin this book review.
“Bitcoin
Billionaires: A True Story of Genius, Betrayal, and Redemption” is the
latest book in a series of flashy exposés of some of the world’s biggest
financial success stories from writer Ben Mezrich. Most well-known as
the man that penned the book behind “The Social Network,” a movie that
brought the Winklevii into the millennial zeitgeist as two tall, overly
handsome, not-so-lovable Men of Harvard, Mezrich’s latest book explores
the beginning of Facebook from the perspective of these mirror twins all
the way through the making of their own billions in crypto.
However,
the story behind the all-hail Mark Zuckerberg movie, “The Accidental
Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius,
and Betrayal,” shares a lot more than just a title full of billionaires,
genius and betrayal — it now shares cryptocurrency.
Going back to
the start, before this week when Facebook’s Libra project blew up both
crypto and mainstream media, the Winklevoss twins were (and still are)
arguably two of the biggest names in cryptocurrency. As a managing
editor of a crypto publication, I’d been trained to look out whenever
either of the twins said or did anything, as even a tweet of 120
characters from a Winklevii could get a story a high number of views.
Mezrich’s
story gave me a new perspective on this Winklevoss celebrité:
Apparently, before they became two of the kings of crypto, they were the
black sheep of Silicon Valley. After the drawn-out court case between
the twins and Zuckerberg over their right to a small part of Facebook
due to their arguably initial idea that inspired Zuckerberg to create
the global social network, Silicon Valley apparently cut the twins
loose.
They sued Facebook and won. Now what?
The way
Mezrich writes it, these two newfound millionaires (who had insisted on
taking part of their settlement in Facebook stock, an idea that is
portrayed as over-exaggeratedly opposed by their lawyers at the time)
just could not give their money away. Their pariah status comes to a
head in a well-known-ish diner in the valley, when a visibly nervous
potential startup founder rejects their money after a previous
acceptance, appears scared to be seen with them (although this attitude
begs the question, why had he agreed to meet the two very tall, large
investors in such a public place?), and explains to them in much
overwrought, sweaty detail why their money will never be welcome in
Zuckerberg’s Silicon Valley.
While this particular conversation
with this degree of specificity may or may not have taken place,
Mezrich’s point is clear: The Winklevii were not welcome in Silicon
Valley.
The rest of the book flies by their introduction to Bitcoin for the first time (in a club in Ibiza) —
“‘Cryptocurrency,’ Cameron repeated, from his daybed. ‘It sounds criminal. Is it legal?’”
— to their fateful first meetings with Charlie Shrem —
“Cameron
couldn’t help feel the nervous energy bleeding out of the kid — Charlie
was actually trembling — or smell the hint of marijuana seeping from
his plaid short-sleeve shirt and distressed khaki pants.”
— the mutual intense dislike between them and “Bitcoin Jesus” Roger Ver —
“As far as Ver was concerned, the Winklevoss twins, celluloid ‘Men of Harvard,’ were the Establishment’s wet dream.”
— and the eventual investment in both Shrem’s now-defunct BitInstant and bitcoin (BTC) itself, leaving the twins with 1% of the crypto’s entire supply.
Charlie Shrem enters the stage
Shrem,
at this point, has become a major, manic character in both the book and
the twins’ life. The book describes their relationship as being on
friendly grounds for the majority of their connection to each other,
although each time Charlie is introduced, his adjectives become more
childlike and a bit more dismissive, up to the point that he is
sometimes alluded to as the CEO of his favorite nightclub rather than of
BitInstant.
By the time that Shrem is jailed, which coincides
with the New York State Department of Financial Services’ infamous
cryptocurrency hearings with the now-hated Ben Lawsky (the
anti-crypto-legislator-turned-entrepreneur who advises
New York crypto firms on how to follow the confusing laws he himself
created), the twins have written Shrem off as a bad investment.
It
would be interesting to see how Shrem has reacted to his
characterization here, but he’s left me unread on Telegram since
November 2018, when I texted him for comments about the Winklevoss’ now-settled
lawsuit against him for theft of 5,000 bitcoin around this same time
(which, for some reason, was not covered in Mezrich’s book).
Roger Ver: The antihero
Bitcoin
Jesus Roger Ver is brought in by Mezrich in the role of Charlie’s best
friend, mentor and antithesis to the Winklevoss twins. The Winklevii
hate him, Mezrich makes that abundantly clear — to the extent that they
will never meet with him in-person throughout most of the book.
This
seems to be a rather extreme reaction as investors in a common project
that has a relatively incomptentant CEO that they both know well, but
Mezrich paints over their strange inability to even have a normal
business conversation with Ver by portraying this Jesus character as
what your mom would call a “very bad influence that you shouldn’t play
with.” And thus, the Winklevii will not play with him.
Taking Bitcoin mainstream
The
move from the Winklevoss twins owning bitcoin to starting a
cryptocurrency exchange is explained very quickly, but the point behind
the idea has been hammered into the reader’s head the entire book: The
Winklevoss twins really, truly love regulation. And what better way is
there to ensure regulation in the crypto space than to create an
exchange, base the business in New York (the state with the most
stringent crypto laws) and then make sure people regulate it?
And this is what the Winklevii have done. They started Gemini Capital, received the BitLicense for Genesis Global Trading, and they were the first to get the SEC rolling on whether or not to accept a bitcoin exchange-traded fund.
Back
to the book, up to almost the present day, the ending trails off with
an almost-unidentified man (surprise! it’s Mark Zuckerberg!) penning a
ridiculous letter in January 2018 about his marathoning, Mandarin skills and newfound interest in cryptocurrency.
But
this book’s author could not have predicted that more than a year
later, when the book came out, Zuckerberg’s over-the-top Christmas
missive would lead to a media frenzy surrounding the Libra Association,
libra stablecoin, Libra Investor Token, and the list goes on.
All
of this makes the similar titles of Mezrich’s books a bittersweet joke,
especially when juxtaposed with the scene in the book in which the
Winklevii are pleased that crypto-focused New York Times journalist
Nathaniel Popper doesn’t use the word “Facebook” in the headline of his
second article about the twins and crypto. Zuckerberg has definitely
caught up to them in the crypto space célébrité, even though his project
has been met with a significant amount of scorn over its decentralization — or lack thereof.
And
to add insult to injury — depending on your opinion of Zuckerberg’s
pettiness (mine was amplified by a very early scene in the book wherein
the Facebook mogul insisted on only meeting with one twin during a
mediation due to an apparent fear of being punched) — libra stablecoin,
gemini dollar… can anyone here read a horoscope?
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