Winklevoss v Zuckerberg: a rematch in the metaverse?
Zuckerberg vs Winklevoss may become a Walled Garden vs Open Metaverse competition quite soon ?
Winklevoss brothers, who once accused Mark Zuckerberg of stealing their social platform idea and its source code, are well-known early crypto adopters. They started buying Bitcoin when its price was as low as $10 ? and founded their crypto exchange Gemini in 2014. Since then they have invested in numerous crypto startups, and their acquisition of NFT marketplace Nifty Gateway in 2019 – before the NFT boom – was among other visionary steps they have taken, each time diving deeper into the crypto space. They have always used their own capital though.
? Yesterday the brothers announced $400M raised in their first series of external funding, suggesting that they are willing to aim bigger.
How do they plan to use the funds? Quoting Tyler Winklevoss’ twitter thread :
“The short answer is — to advance our mission to unlock your financial, creative, and personal freedom. The long answer is — you’ll just have to wait and see”.
The chances are big that it will be linked to the metaverse, as the Gemini Frontier Fund’s portfolio consists largely of the metaverse- and NFT-related companies.
Facebook’s recent metaverse plans have only highlighted the need for a decentralized alternative – an open virtual world that will allow people own their data and all possible virtual items they could purchase in the metaverse and related games. Winklevoss efforts since they have parted ways with Zuckerberg were deployed in the decentralized space, while the Facebook empire was gaining strength as a worldwide Walled Garden – a platform where users’ data belongs to the company that make profits off it.
As crypto ecosystems becomes increasingly diverse and rich, leveraging it correctly could offer the Winklevoss brothers a rematch against Mark Zuckerberg. Maybe another movie will come out of it ?
