Who are the richest people investing in Bitcoin? These two brothers' investments are worth more than $1 billion

As of October 2017, brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss may be the richest celebrities in terms of Bitcoin investment, as their 1% of the total Bitcoin holdings is worth $1 billion.

The brothers gained notoriety earlier this year for their legal battle with Mark Zuckerberg, who was accused of stealing the brothers' original Facebook social network concept.

In a Twitter post, freelance columnist Sid Kalla claimed that the Winklevoss twins have become bona fide Bitcoin billionaires as the market capitalization of the largest cryptocurrency hit the $100 billion mark.

Bitcoin market cap hits $100B, don’t forget the Winklevoss twins are officially Bitcoin billionaires (owning 1% of Bitcoin supply) — Sid Kalla (@sidkal) October 30, 2017

The Winklevoss twins’ investment in Bitcoin

The Winklevoss twins claimed that they first learned about Bitcoin in 2012. In 2013, they announced that they had purchased 1% of the total supply of Bitcoin. In late 2013, the brothers said in an interview that they had not sold a single coin and that they stored their Bitcoin USB device wallets in different safe deposit boxes around the world.

Furthermore, in a Reddit AMA, the brothers claimed that they were impressed by Bitcoin’s elegance and huge potential when they first heard about it in 2012.

“We first learned about Bitcoin in 2012, on a small island off the coast of Spain in mid-August. Our first impression was that Bitcoin would eventually either become really big or go completely to zero. We were immediately attracted by its elegance and its huge promise. Then we started to learn more about Bitcoin and we became convinced that Bitcoin was the future of money.”

In 2015, the Winklevoss brothers launched their own exchange, Gemini.

In addition, the Winklevoss brothers have been promoting the Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) for the past two years. However, after the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) postponed the decision on whether to approve the Bitcoin ETF several times, in early March 2017, the SEC finally chose to reject the Bitcoin ETF.