Thanks to BTC they became billionaires, but previously invented Facebook. The twins debut at Wall Street
On stock exchanges in the USA, a queue of people willing to enter the stock exchange. Only on Friday they are to debut four companies and two more special destinations, whose offers were a total of over $ 2 billion. One of the debuting companies is the cryptocurrency exchange founded by the Winklevoss brothers.
This is a busy week at Wall Street in terms of public offers and debuts on New York stock exchanges. On Wednesday, the Swedish clarine debuted on Nasdaq, after an offer worth nearly $ 1.4 billion. On Thursday, Figure Technology Solutions, dealing with decentralized finances based on blockchain, had its debut, raising over $ 787 million in IPO early.
To this must be added several debuts of Spac (Special PurPose Acquisition Company) companies, i.e. special purpose companies dealing with collecting capital from the market in order to take over other businesses. The media in the USA write about IPO fever. Everyone wants to manage to conduct a public offer and enter the stock exchange, when the indexes break records and shares in the debut only grow.
The situation refers by the end of 2021, when the IPO market was experiencing the apogee, and in the environment of cheap money (before the Fed and other central banks began to raise interest rates) the valuations of some businesses became even irrational. We would like to remind you that the manufacturer of Rivian electric pickups in IPO has been priced at $ 66 billion. Without one car sold. Now, after selling about 51 thousand cars in 2024 is worth more than three times less.
Friday queue for the stock exchange
The value of offers debuting this week on the US companies in the US, is almost doubled on Friday. On this day, the investor's calendar includes the debuts of two Spac companies (both on Nasdaq) and the debuts of such companies as the Gemini cryptocurrency exchange (IPO worth $ 425.6 million), legend of Corp., dealing with the energy efficiency of buildings (IPO 867 million dollars), Black Rock Coffee cafe network dol.) and NYSE managing the VIA Transportation traffic (IPO $ 542 million).
Attention is drawn primarily to the debut of Gemini Space Station. Although this is another company from the Krytpowadowluz industry, which this year debuts on the US Stock Exchange (including Coinbase, Bulish O Circle), an interesting story stands behind their founders, who are the Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss brothers. A few words about them about them about IPO Gemini.
Stock Exchange of the twins from Facebook
The final price of the offer was given on Thursday evening and was set for $ 28 per share. It is much above the $ 24-26 range, which was announced this week, after lifting from the original range of $ 17–19. With a sale offer of 15.2 million shares – less than the expected 16.67 million – Gemini's public offer brought around $ 425.6 million. The company was valued at nearly $ 3.3 billion.
The Gemini exchange (from Latin twins) was founded in 2014. Currently, it supports about 1.5 million active users in over 60 countries and managing assets worth over $ 21 billion (state at the end of July). The company still generates losses of $ 283 million. In the first half 2025 – but among the company's investors there was a NASDAQ stock exchange, which put $ 50 million on shares. After IPO, the Winklevoss brothers will continue to have 75.37 million shares of the company and 94.5 percent. votes.
Cameron and Tyler billionaires have been for a long time. In 2013, they invested about $ 11 million in bitcoin, which at that time cost about $ 120 per item. This investment turned out to be extremely accurate, because the price of the first cryptocurrency increased rapidly in the following years. In 2017, their assets in Bitcoin already exceeded $ 1 billion. According to most estimates, the Winklevoss brothers still belong to the largest individual Bitcoin owners, having at least 70,000 BTC, currently worth over $ 8 billion.
Where did they have $ 11 million for the first investment? Here you should go back to the time of study at Harvard, where they came up with the idea of creating a social network called Connect (originally Harvardconnection). At that time, another Harvard student – Mark Zuckerberg – worked on a similar platform, which Facebook called.
The Winklevoss brothers allow Zuckerberg about theft of an idea, and then made a settlement with him, in which they received $ 20 million in cash and $ 45 million in Facebook. When in May 2012 Facebook entered the stock exchange, the value of the brothers' shares practically doubled, but the shares were already a small percentage in the shareholding. In the following years they built their property in the following years on investments in cryptocurrencies.
In the meantime, they represented the United States at the Summer Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008. They competed in the rowing competition of two without a helmsman, where they took 6th place. Events from the time of study were also presented in the film “The Social Network” about the beginnings of Facebook.
Michał Kubicki
