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- The recent funding round will nearly double the wealth of Gemini founders aka the Winklevoss twins.
- The two brothers also have big plans for Metaverse development putting up a head-on competition with Facebook.
In its latest funding round, cryptocurrency exchange Gemini has announced a $400 million fundraise at a valuation of $7 billion. Founders of Gemini, the Winklevoss twins will retain 75 percent ownership of the company post this investment.
As per reports, their combined net wealth will nearly double from $6 billion in April to $10.5 billion as of date. The latest funding round will be led by capital management giant Morgan Creek Digital. It also includes participation from ParaFi Capital, a decentralized finance (DeFi) venture firm.
Gemini joins the list of several other crypto companies raising funds amid the booming market condition. Some of its biggest rivals like Coinbase Global and ConsenSys Inc have also been taking advantage of these favorable market conditions.
In terms of the capital raise New York-based Morgan Creek has contributed $75 million. As a result, its general partner Sachin Jaitly became the third member of Gemini’s board of directors. As reported by Bloomberg, no plans are final at this stage and the terms of the deal can still change.
Metaverse becomes the new battleground for Gemini
It seems that Winklevoss twins are all set to battle their old rival aka Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg over the newly brewing Metaverse revolution. Speaking to Forbes regarding this, Gemini co-founder Cameron Winklevoss said:
There’s these two parallel paths, in terms of technology right now. There’s a centralized path, like Facebook or Fortnight, that is one step away from being a metaverse, and that’s totally fine.
But there is another path, which is the decentralized metaverse and that’s the metaverse where we believe there’s greater choice, independence and opportunity, and there is technology that protects the rights and dignity of individuals.
It looks like the twins are all set to take the battle with Facebook head-on over the development of Metaverse. The Gemini co-founders had already put the building blocks for metaverse back in 2019. The two brothers bought NFT exchange Nifty Gateway that helps in picking up unique digital assets.
The Nifty Gateway platform adopts a similar path to that of Gemini. The platform is completely decentralized allowing NFT creators to host their work. “Decentralization is a spectrum,” says Cameron. “We want to continue to move down the spectrum towards empowerment. But you have to start somewhere.”
Interestingly, the Gemini co-founders have also made personal investments in the Metaverse through the Winklevoss Capital. The twins have taken a stake in the early version of the metaverse dubbed The Sandbox (SAND), built by Animoca Brands.
As part of The Sandbox deal, the two brothers have also bought a plot of virtual land. They will soon build the first of many virtual locations. Gemini co-founder Tyler Winklevoss said:
Instead of building brick and mortar bank branches in meatspace. We’re gonna build a Gemini experience in different metaverses, where you can go into Gemini, and trade but it would be immersive instead of on your phone.
