The Winklevoss Twins Are Starting a Bitcoin Fund
In case you've been hankering to invest your hard-earned money in an exchange-traded fund run by two handsome, square-jawed brothers whose claim to fame is having been played by Armie Hammer in a movie about having a world-changing company stolen …
Context & Ripple Effects
By mid-2013 Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss are rebuilding a post-Facebook identity as Bitcoin's most visible institutional backers: weeks earlier they led a $1.5M round into BitInstant to make buying the currency easier, and their public persona still carries the Social Network-era notoriety that New York Magazine's wry framing leans on. A fund structure extends that playbook from investing in Bitcoin's plumbing to selling Bitcoin itself.
The timing matters: spring 2013 saw Bitcoin framed as a Cyprus-driven safe haven before an April mini-crash, so the story landed at peak attention. Its syndication spread — Bloomberg, DealBook, Quartz, Ars Technica, ZDNet and more all picked up the same piece within days — signals how far past tech blogs Bitcoin had travelled as a mainstream finance story.
First-order effects
- Retail investors get a way to hold Bitcoin exposure through a managed fund rather than navigating exchanges directly, with the twins' name recognition serving as the trust mechanism.
- The Winklevoss brand pivots from litigation celebrities to asset managers, converting the Facebook settlement fame into a fundraising asset.
Second-order effects
- Their May 2013 BitInstant investment now sits alongside the fund, giving them positions on both sides — the venue where buyers acquire coins and the wrapper where investors hold them — and pressure on rivals to offer similarly packaged access.
- Wall Street and fintech operators watching the coverage have a template for regulated-looking Bitcoin vehicles aimed at people unwilling to self-custody.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Bitcoin adoption routes through familiar financial wrappers rather than raw currency ownership, making whoever wins regulatory acceptance of such funds the sector's gatekeepers — the open question being whether regulators treat these vehicles as legitimate or speculative.
The trend: Cryptocurrency is moving from hobbyist exchanges toward packaged institutional products, with early celebrity-backed funds acting as the bridge to ordinary investors.