A brief history of Gemini and its founders, the Vinkelvoss twins - Episode 344 - by cryptohunt.it

A brief history of Gemini and its founders, the Vinkelvoss twins

Good morning, Cryptohunt community, to the Cryptohunt Jam, where we spend a minute a day explaining what is happening in crypto and other game-changing ideas. As always: In plain English.

Today, we are waking up to news of yet another layoff in the crypto space. This time, it is struggling crypto lender Gemini that is sending another 10% of their workforce home.

And while that may unfortunately sound like business as usual these days, Gemini has a very unique story.

It was founded by the Winkelvoss twins, brothers Tyler and Cameron who, a long time ago, had the idea for the first social network for students at Harvard. They enlisted a young programmer to help them build it - Mark Zuckerberg.

And so, Facebook was born. At least according to the twins, who later sued Zuckerberg for allegedly stealing their idea. After four years, they settled out of court and got $65 million.

What followed then was probably mostly luck but certainly paid off: They put $12 million of that money into Bitcoin when it was trading at just about $100 dollars. It was then when they also took on more and more risky bets: From trying to bring an extinguished species of the wooly mammoth back, to starting crypto lender Gemini.

Gemini, which was founded in 2014, became a place where people could lend their crypto and, in return, get high interest payments back. But that meant that Gemini would have to use the borrowed crypto in even riskier investments to make those payments.

Of course, things went the predictable way once crypto prices collapsed. Like many others playing it a little too fast and loose, Gemini had heavy ties to Genesis, which went down thanks to the FTX domino effect.

And here we are - from Facebook twins to crypto magnates and back: The interesting story of the Vinkelvoss twins and Gemini. We keep our fingers crossed that Gemini customers will see at least some of their money back.

And since it is Tuesday - at least here in the here in San Francisco - why don’t you leave a review of this podcast on Apple Podcasts. It would help us a lot! Thanks for those that make the extra hop right now.

This podcast is produced by Cryptohunt.it, the easiest place to learn all about Web3. And thanks again for that review.