Most people would not have heard of
Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, and those who would have would know the billionaire brothers from their
role in the creation of Facebook. Their story was part of Ben Mezrich’s
book The Accidental Billionaire, which served as the inspiration
for the Oscar-winning movie The Social Network. The brothers were
played by Armie Hammer in that movie, which showed how
Mark Zuckerberg may have
used the brothers’ idea for a restricted social network and put it into
practice at Harvard, which is what then expanded and became the Facebook
we know today. They ended up suing Zuckerburg, and won a $65 million
settlement for their claim in court. The brothers also competed at the
2008 Olympics for the USA in rowing, but it is their more recent exploits
which could soon be a movie.
Ben Mezrich’s new book, Bitcoin Billionaires, charts the
Winklevoss twins’s story from the point of winning that settlement, as
they also became one of the early investors into Bitcoin, putting $11
million into the cryptocurrency in 2013, and the subsequent rise in the
cryptocurrency’s value has made them into the first crypto billionaires in
the world. The movie rights for the book have now been picked up by
Stampede Ventures, which is a production company owned by former
Warner Bros’ president Greg Silverman, and the studio is partnering with the Winklevoss brothers to produce a
movie of this story. Silverman will be co-producing this movie alongside
Jon Berg, who has also worked on superhero blockbusters Aquaman and
Wonder Woman.
This is of course a great example of how the movie industry is always on
the lookout for the most relevant topics to create content on. Of course,
at the moment, cryptocurrency is one of the hottest topics for people to
base content on. It has been growing in popularity over the last few
years, and more and more online providers and websites have begun
accepting cryptocurrency payments. The online casino industry has been at
the forefront of this, with various bitcoin slots and other crypto games
being offered to users. These allow players to use cryptocurrencies to
make payments and withdraw earnings, whether they prefer a
bitcoin slot,
roulette, or any other casino game for bitcoins. This option has become
quite attractive for users, as it is extremely safe and difficult to hack
these payments, as cryptocurrencies are underpinned by blockchain.
Thus, it is encouraging that we could soon have a movie about two of the
early investors into the cryptocurrency space. According to Silverman, he
first had the idea of making a movie on the brothers after reading an
advance copy of the book, which was actually given to his son while he was
interning at Winklevoss Capital by the twins. Silverman believed that the
redemption story, as told in the book, combined with Mezrich’s excellent
writing, would make for a compelling and one of a kind movie, which is why
he decided to go for the movie adaptation rights. Silverman has
characterised the story as ‘Rocky II meets Wall Street’, in terms of the
fight and determination shown by the twins to recover from the shock of
seeing Facebook become a global behemoth, but on the back of their idea.
Their investment into Bitcoin was considered downright risky, and even
crazy at that time, but it has been proven correct in a huge way since
then - the value of that investment is over a billion dollars and
climbing, showing that the twins have had a great eye for innovative and
explosive products and services, which could also be seen in their initial
idea for a social network. Thus, it will be extremely interesting to see
how this movie pans out.