Winklevoss Capital is a

family office A family office is a privately held company that handles investment management and wealth management for a wealthy family, generally one with at least $50-$100 million in investable assets, with the goal being to effectively grow and transfer w ...

founded in 2012 by

Tyler Winklevoss Tyler Howard Winklevoss (born August 21, 1981) is an American investor, founder of Winklevoss Capital Management and Gemini cryptocurrency exchange, and Olympic rower. Winklevoss co-founded HarvardConnection (later renamed ConnectU) along wit ...

and Cameron Howard Winklevoss. The firm invests across multiple

asset classes In finance, an asset class is a group of financial instruments that have similar financial characteristics and behave similarly in the marketplace. We can often break these instruments into those having to do with real assets and those having ...

including

seed funding Seed money, sometimes known as seed funding or seed capital, is a form of securities offering in which an investor invests capital in a startup company in exchange for an equity stake or convertible note stake in the company. The term ''seed'' su ...

and infrastructure to early-stage

startups A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an Entrepreneurship, entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship refers to all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses t ...

. The company is headquartered in New York’s

Flatiron District The Flatiron District is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, named after the Flatiron Building at 23rd Street, Broadway and Fifth Avenue. Generally, the Flatiron District is bounded by 14th Street, Union Square and Green ...

Cryptocurrencies

On April 11, 2012, Tyler Winklevoss and Cameron Winklevoss revealed ownership of approximately 1% of

bitcoin Bitcoin ( abbreviation: BTC; sign: ₿) is a decentralized digital currency that can be transferred on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network. Bitcoin transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public distr ...

s in circulation, worth about $11 million, via Winklevoss Capital. The brothers began buying bitcoin when the value of a single coin was in the single digits. On July 1, 2013, Digital Asset Services, LLC (wholly owned by Winklevoss Capital) filed a

Form S-1 Form S-1 is an SEC filing used by companies planning on going public to register their securities with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as the "registration statement by the Securities Act of 1933". The S-1 contains the basic ...

with the

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government, created in the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The primary purpose of the SEC is to enforce the law against market ...

to create the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust, an

exchange-traded fund An exchange-traded fund (ETF) is a type of investment fund and exchange-traded product, i.e. they are traded on stock exchanges. ETFs are similar in many ways to mutual funds, except that ETFs are bought and sold from other owners throughout the ...

for bitcoin. In 2013, Winklevoss also lead a funding round for

BitInstant Charles Shrem IV (born November 25, 1989)Max Raskin“Meet the Bitcoin Millionaires,”''Bloomberg Businessweek'', April 10, 2013. is an American entrepreneur and bitcoin advocate. He co-founded the now-defunct startup company BitInstant, and is ...

, a bitcoin exchange start-up based in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. Winklevoss Capital, along with other investors, raised $1.5 million in seed funding to help BitInstant increase its staff and scale up its product. Since then, Winklevoss Capital has invested in a number of early stage equity companies and token networks in the cryptocurrency space. In 2014, Winklevoss Capital invested in Protocol Labs. The firm also participated in the fundraising for

Filecoin Filecoin (⨎) is an open-source, public cryptocurrency and digital payment system intended to be a blockchain-based cooperative digital storage and data retrieval method. It is made by Protocol Labs and shares some ideas from InterPlanetary ...

in 2017.

Venture capital activities

Winklevoss Capital actively invests in early stage startups in

fintech Fintech, a portmanteau of "financial technology", refers to firms using new technology to compete with traditional financial methods in the delivery of financial services. Artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud computing, and big data are r ...

, direct-to-consumer brands, education, and gaming. The firm's investments include: *

Animoca Brands Animoca Brands (Animoca Brands Corporation Ltd) is a Hong Kong-based game software company and venture capital company founded in 2014 by Yat Siu. It was listed on the Australian Securities Exchange from 23 January 2015 to 9 March 2020. Nota ...

* August Locks (alongside Bessemer Venture Partners,

Comcast Ventures Comcast Ventures was a corporate venture capital firm headquartered in San Francisco, California. History In early 2011, Comcast and NBCUniversal combined their two venture arms, Comcast Interactive Capital founded in 1999 and the Peacock Fund, ...

, and

Qualcomm Ventures Qualcomm Ventures is the investment arm of Qualcomm Incorporated. Founded in 2000, Qualcomm Ventures is a corporate venture capital fund with 140+ active portfolio companies. Investing in startups targeting the wireless ecosystem, the group focuse ...

) * Bitski * Carbon38 * Cabify (alongside

Rakuten () is a Japanese technology conglomerate based in Tokyo, founded by Hiroshi Mikitani in 1997. Centered around Rakuten Ichiba, its businesses include financial services utilizing financial technology, as well as digital content and communicati ...

) * Caviar (acquired by

Square In Euclidean geometry, a square is a regular quadrilateral, which means that it has four equal sides and four equal angles (90-degree angles, π/2 radian angles, or right angles). It can also be defined as a rectangle with two equal-length adj ...

Andreessen Horowitz Andreessen Horowitz (also called a16z, legal name AH Capital Management, LLC) is a private American venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. Andreessen ...

was also an investor) * Flexport (alongside

Founders Fund Founders Fund is a San Francisco-based venture capital firm. Formed in 2005, Founders Fund had more than $11 billion in aggregate capital under management as of 2022. The firm invests across all stages and sectors, including aerospace, artificia ...

, Joe Lonsdale,

SoftBank Vision Fund The SoftBank Vision Fund is a venture capital fund founded in 2017 that is part of the SoftBank Group. With over $100 billion in capital, it is the world's largest technology-focused investment fund. In 2019, SoftBank Vision Fund 2 was founded. T ...

, and

First Round Capital First Round is a venture capital firm that specializes in providing seed-stage funding to technology companies. Founded by Josh Kopelman Joshua Kopelman is an American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and philanthropist. Kopelman is best k ...

) * FiscalNote (alongside

Temasek Temasek (also spelt Temasik) is an early recorded name of a settlement on the site of modern Singapore. The name appears in early Malay and Javanese literature, and it is also recorded in Yuan and Ming Chinese documents as ''Danmaxi'' ( or ). ...

) * Kindbody (alongside

Chelsea Clinton Chelsea Victoria Clinton (born February 27, 1980) is an American writer and global health advocate. She is the only child of former U.S. President Bill Clinton and former U.S. Secretary of State and 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton ...

) * L. * Makespace (alongside

Carmelo Anthony Carmelo Kyam Anthony (born May 29, 1984) is an American professional basketball player who last played for the Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He has been named an NBA All-Star ten times and an All-NBA Team me ...

and

Nas Nas (born 1973) is the stage name of American rapper Nasir Jones. Nas, NaS, or NAS may also refer to: Aviation * Nasair, a low-cost airline carrier and subsidiary based in Eritrea * National Air Services, an airline in Saudi Arabia ** Nas Air ( ...

) * MemeBox * MeUndies * Minibar * Rowing Blazers * Shinesty * Teachable (alongside

Naval Ravikant Naval Ravikant is an Indian-American entrepreneur and investor. He is the co-founder, chairman and former CEO of AngelList. He has invested early-stage in over 200 companies including Uber, FourSquare, Twitter, Wish.com, Poshmark, Postmates, Thu ...

)

Medical cannabis

In 2017, Winklevoss was expected to buy up to $500,000 worth of shares in

Eaze Eaze is an American company based in San Francisco, California that launched a medical cannabis delivery app of the same name in 2014. History Eaze was launched in 2014 by Keith McCarty to deliver medical marijuana to patients in California. McCa ...

, a cannabis delivery startup. After a new Eaze CEO was named, the firm backed out of the deal and in May 2016 was sued in

Delaware Delaware ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Maryland to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and New Jersey and the Atlantic Ocean to its east. The state takes its name from the adjacent Del ...

court for reneging on the deal. Winklevoss is also an investor in Eaze and participated in its Series B financing round in 2016.

References

{{reflist, 2

External links

winklevosscapital.com
Financial services companies established in 2012 Private equity portfolio companies Venture capital firms of the United States Investment companies based in New York City American companies established in 2012 2012 establishments in New York City Winklevoss family