Winklevoss Twins Predict the Next Crypto Explosion — And It’s Not Bitcoin!

The catalyst for bitcoin was very much the financial crisis of 2008. And the catalyst for privacy is the age, or the dawn of the age of AI.

Bitcoin really proved out the concept of decentralization and non government money in a big way. But there's more work to be done.

Bitcoin is where you store your value and zcash is where you transact or spend your value.

Hi there everyone, Gareth Jenkinson here at Bitcoin Amsterdam. It's a great pleasure to be joined by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. They're twins, I'm a twin dad. So it's fantastic to be sitting across from two grown up twins and not my two year olds running around. Gentlemen, it's great to finally chat to you. You guys launched a zcash treasury company. I'm very curious. I'm sure a lot of bitcoiners out there are very curious about this move, considering you invested so much money in treasury here, which is a very exciting new Amsterdam based bitcoin treasury company. Can you chat to us a little bit more about this new move before we get into all things bitcoin?

So we're huge fans of bitcoin, we're hodlers, of course, and also huge fans of zcash, which we view as encrypted bitcoin. So bitcoin is where you store your value and zcash is where you transact or spend your value. And so we launched adat, a Treasury company for zcash, but really dedicated to privacy and self sovereignty this week to help mainstream these ideas. The catalyst for bitcoin was very much the financial crisis of 2008. And the catalyst for privacy is the age, or the dawn of the age of AI.

Let's talk about Treasury. I had the great pleasure of chatting a lot with King Oe over the last two weeks. What is the unique opportunity for a bitcoin treasury company in Europe and why did you guys decide to get on board with this one in particular?

So I think treasury will be Europe's first Treasury company. Dat. Bitcoin, dat. And I think giving more access to Europeans to bitcoin is important.

So we're excited about that.

I know they're not listed yet, but are you guys anxious to see that happen quite, quite quickly or is it just due process and when it goes live, that's. That's it?

Yeah, I think we'll have to sort of see where the process takes it, but we like to take it live as soon as possible to give people access to, to bitcoin before it continues to grow and appreciate in price.

There's been a lot of focus on prediction markets in the cryptocurrency space, especially this year. Really, really successful businesses. Polymarket, Kalshi. There was a Bloomberg report talking about Gemini potentially doing something like this. Can you guys talk a little bit about prediction markets and what you may or may not be doing?

So we're working to bring prediction markets live on Gemini. We're very excited about them because you can really build a market on anything, any event. And so we think they could be, it's very early days but we think they could be as large as traditional capital markets over the long term and we're very excited to bring those products to market.

The Gemini credit card has been quite critically acclaimed in the industry. I think from a user experience point of view, it's a game changer. As someone who has a conventional bank account and someone who has an account with someone like crypto.com where I can just walk around and tap a virtual card and use my cryptocurrency for money, that is a fantastic user experience. What's the feedback been like and do you think that's the future where we have lots of crypto powered apps that do everything that Tradfi does and we don't need to look at the traditional banking system anymore?

So the feedback's been tremendous. People love the card. It's really changing the paradigm. Most credit cards, you can earn cash back or points, airline miles, we think points are pointless. Airline miles, who knows what they're worth, right? And cash is always depreciating. So the ability to earn crypto back is a game changer and it's changing the paradigm. So it's been really well received. I have obviously a Gemini credit card. I also have a lot of other credit cards. I never log into any of those other credit card apps. I don't even try. It's a terrible experience, terrible ux. But I log into Gemini, the Gemini app all the time for the credit card and see the purchases and how much bitcoin I've earned back. So it's a huge hit and we're to continue to roll it out and improve on it. We've done co branded credit cards. There's the bitcoin orange one. We've done Solana recently and XRP co branded and we'll continue to do that. But we have some really exciting news and we're going to also look to look go into other verticals like small merchant business verticals. For the card. A lot of people have the Gemini credit card. They're earning crypto in their personal lives, but not in their business lives. And they'd love to run their expenses through with a Gemini business card and earn Bitcoin back.

You guys have been in bitcoin longer than most people. You've probably caught a lot of criticism over the years for supporting different cryptocurrency protocols. Can you talk a little bit about having a more open mindset to that? Because there are a certain group of bitcoiners that are very much bitcoin only you guys are not really that or I guess very open minded. Can you talk a little bit about this philosophy and if and when that mind shift happened? Because I think some people it just never happens. It's Bitcoin and Bitcoin only forever. Is that the wrong approach?

We don't view this as a zero sum game where the pie is fixed. And so Bitcoin's obviously Gold 2.0. It's the soundest money in the world. But when Ethereum came along and started working on innovating programmability, we thought it was really cool. Bitcoin didn't want to do that. I understand that it's great that other people are innovating with the technology on smart contracts and whatnot. And so I don't think that it's taking away from Bitcoin actually. If it brings in people into the space, let's say like engineers who want to work on smart contracts and Ethereum who weren't excited about it with Bitcoin, then that's really positive because once you buy Ethereum, well then you're closer, one step closer to buying Bitcoin. So I think it brings more people into the space. Some people first started getting involved in crypto through NFTs and then eventually bought Bitcoin. But if it wasn't for NFTs, they wouldn't have ever purchased Bitcoin. So I think it's a net positive to Bitcoin. I think it grows bitcoin. But Bitcoin obviously innovated with proof of work, Ethereum with programmability and now zcash with privacy. So I like that innovation, I like to see that happen. And I actually think it grows, all of it grows the whole pie, including the bitcoin pie.

I had a fascinating conversation with Eli Ben Sasson, who's one of the co authors of the Zero Cash paper, which is of course the basis for for zcash. And we spoke at length about wanting to do that initially on Bitcoin, but then obviously doing it on zcash because of, you know, opcat not being part of the bitcoin script or Satoshi taking it out. Would you have rather have seen this sort of privacy feature on Bitcoin and would you advocate for that to happen for opcat and whatever else needs to happen for Bitcoin to have the same sort of privacy functionality that something like zcash happens now? Or. Or do you think that the current iteration or the current world that we live in where you can have Bitcoin and then encrypted Bitcoin through zcash is good enough?

I think the current world works with Bitcoin and zcash. I mean, ideally bitcoin would have added it in in the early days and maybe it will over time. And I think a lot of cryptos are going to be adding it in over time. Bitcoin really proved out the concept of decentralization and non government money in a big way. But there's more work to be done.

Were you guys quite pleased to see that the general sort of positive sentiment about the zcash treasury company, I know I've asked you about it previously already, but just to probe a little bit more like that narrative on X has been massive for the past two months. There's been really some big names in the industry, including yourselves, that have really gotten behind this. It kind of seemed like it happened out of nowhere. Do you have the same sort of feeling or were you kind of always bullish on Zcash since 20, 2016, 2017?

We've been bullish since the launch, since inception. But I think these things hit inflection points and bitcoin's had a couple different inflection points along the way. I think the first one we experienced was this in Cyprus. There was a bail in and that sent Bitcoin up, I think over $100 in a very short period of time. And I think the world took notice all of a sudden. It was sort of front page news. I think as we enter the dawn of AI privacy's, you know, ever more important. And so I think zcash has sort of hit one of those inflection points over the last couple months. And the people that are in zcash and excited about zcash are also OG bitcoiners who were there in the early days and cypherpunks, you know, back as far back into the 90s. Zuko being one of the founders of Zcash, he's an OG cypherpunk. So I think it was just a matter of time of like when, not an if.

Gemini is one of a handful of exchanges that you can buy zcash on. If you download the Zashi Wallet, you can use near intents to swap other cryptocurrencies to zcash. Do you think there's a lot that needs to happen for that user experience to improve or is it up to people that are privacy minded to go and jump through the numerous hoops they need to jump through to get their hands on some zcash?

Yeah, I mean, I think buying zcash on Gemini is pretty easy. It's as easy as buying bitcoin on Gemini. And then there's Zashi, Apple and now Cypherpunk. You can just buy zcash exposure if you don't want to buy the underlying, but you can buy the exposure through your brokerage account. It's as easy as that. So we're really excited. I mean any of them work and we're just trying to create more access to this asset that we love and believe in.

I don't love doing price predictions because that's not really why I'm in this industry. But a lot of people are definitely looking for some medium to long term kind of gauge of where bitcoin will be. You know, Arthur Hayes is talking about $3.2 million by 2028. Given monetary expansion, these kind of things. Where do you guys see bitcoin in the next three years? Is a million dollar per bitcoin a realistic expectation? What do you think of the maturity of the industry, the amount of institutional interest involved in this fantastic industry that we're all a part of?

Bitcoin is gold 2.0. So it's got to disrupt the market cap of gold. So just do the math. But I don't know if it's a 10x from here or it's a little bit more, but I think we see a bit one bitcoin trading at over a million dollars per coin in the not too distant future. And so I think It's a minimum 10x from here.

Cameron, Tyler, thank you so much for your time. It's great to catch up with you. We look forward to the next time. Hopefully it won't be three or four, five years, but until then, thank you very much. Great, thank you gentlemen.