Featured Image Credit: Penske Media/Contributor / Francesco Carta fotografo / Getty
The world's first Bitcoin billionaires have proven that investing early can sometimes be the catalyst to success, but they weren't always given the praise that they perhaps deserve for their smart actions.
If you've ever watched The Social Network you'll be more than aware of the Winklevoss Twins, who sued Facebook co-founder and current head of Meta Mark Zuckerberg over the claim that they were the ones that came up with the initial idea.
The rapid success of Facebook as a platform made their case a compelling and financially viable victory, and the Harvard graduated pair managed to settle with Zuckerberg for a significant sum of around $65 million.
While many people might use the funds to start their own business, prepare for the future, or splash out on luxury goods, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss decided to invest their newly earned fortune into a newly formed cryptocurrency you might have heard of called Bitcoin.
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Having been created in 2009, Bitcoin had climbed to a value of about $10 per coin when the pair decided to invest in 2012, and they picked up around 120,000 using the settlement funds.
Since then Bitcoin has only only remained the most popular and valuable cryptocurrency on the market, but recent trends following Donald Trump's election victory have seen it soar close to $100,000 per coin - a roughly 10000% increase.
Speaking to the New York Times back in 2017, Tyler Winklevoss pointed out that their decision to go big and early on Bitcoin wasn't exactly well thought of at the time: "We've turned that laughter and ridicule into oxygen and wind at our back," he explained.
At the time of the interview they had still kept hold of their initial investment, splitting the 'key' to the crypto wallet into different pieces which were then locked away in banks all across America.
They were certainly right in their decision to hold though, as that initial $1.2 million trust in Bitcoin has more than paid off for the pair.
Based on the current market price of around $95,824 per Bitcoin, their wallet could currently be sold for $11,498,880,000, which marks an increase of 958140% from their first purchase back in 2012.
During the interview with the New York Times the twins revealed that their current Bitcoin fortune was around $1.3 billion, which indicates that they have perhaps withdrawn some and the current value wouldn't be quite as high, but you can only imagine that it's at least grown by five times since then considering the per-coin price was around $17,500 at the end of 2017.
It goes to show that you should perhaps stick to your convictions and gut instinct even if you're facing laughter from others, as you could end up a multi-billionaire in just over a decade.
