The Winklevoss brothers want to compete with arch-rival Facebook/Meta to build the best metaverse.
Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, the twins who once claimed that Mark Zuckerberg stole the original idea for Facebook from them, are becoming giants in the crypto world today. In 2014, they founded the crypto exchange Gemini to step into the world of digital coins. They used to finance that adventure entirely with their own capital (the brothers would each hold about 5 billion dollars).
That tradition was broken this week, and for a very special reason. Gemini announced that it 400 million dollars raised in investments. That money will be pumped into a brand new Gemini project. The Winklevosen want to create their own metaverse from the ground and thus directly compete with their arch-rival Mark Zuckerberg.
“More choices”
In early November, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that his company will rebrand itself as “Meta,” a reference to its new primary focus; the rollout of de metaverse. That is a virtual world in which people will interact with each other (and products). But the Winklevoss brothers don’t like the way Facebook/Meta will curb such an alternative digital universe.
“There are two ways in which technology develops that run parallel to each other. One is a centralized path, like Facebook and Fortnite (a popular video game, ed.) walk. Those systems are just one step away from developing a metaverse, and that’s completely okay,” said Cameron Winklevoss in an interview with business site Forbes. “But there is another way, the decentralized metaverse. And that’s the metaverse where there will be more choices, independence and possibilities that will protect the rights and dignity of individuals.”
An alternative to Zuckerberg’s metaverse
Several blockchain companies raised more than $4 billion in the past month to an alternative to develop for the closed system that Zuckerberg aspires to as an ideal metaverse. Behind that movement are sometimes remarkable players from the business world.
Gemini, for example, is backed by New York investment manager Morgan Creek and the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. Morgan Creek pumped a whopping $75 million into the brothers’ plans. The Winklevos retain as much as 75 percent of the ownership of their crypto company.
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