Winklevoss twins

The Winklevoss twins (born August 21, 1981) are American rowers and internet entrepreneurs, Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss.

They competed in the men's pair rowing event at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

They are known for co-founding HarvardConnection (later renamed ConnectU) along with Harvard classmate Divya Narendra.

Their father, Howard E. Winklevoss, was a professor of actuarial science at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Pension Mathematics with Numerical Illustrations, and founder of Winklevoss Consultants and Winklevoss Technologies.

In 2004, the Winklevoss brothers sued Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for $140 million, claiming he stole their ConnectU idea to create the popular social networking site.

They are now venture capitalists, and have led a seed funding round for Bitcoin payment processor BitInstant.

In April 2013, the brothers claimed they owned nearly 1% of all Bitcoin in existence at the time.



BitInstant is a startup company selling Bitcoin, a digital currency. BitInstant is based in New York City.

In September 2012, when presidential candidate Mitt Romney was threatened with blackmail unless he paid an anonymous group $1 million in Bitcoin, BitInstant's Erik Voorhees offered to purchase the Bitcoin for him without a fee.