Winklevoss Twins talk Bitcoin’s future, ETF plans, Gemini and more in Reddit AMA

The Winklevoss twins hosted an Ask Me Anything (AMA) on Reddit that covered their efforts with the Gemini Exchange, cryptocurrency in general and other topics. We detail the highlights of the AMA here, though the AMA is well worth reading in full.

The post opened with an introduction that referred to their full page advertisement on the New York Times and ended with a mission statement of “Our goal is to build Gemini into a Centurion — a company that lasts a for more than 100 years — that will help power the crypto revolution onward and upward and to the moon! Join us to talk Gemini, crypto, or anything else that is on your mind!”

Users posted several questions to the twins, including some hard-hitting ones, which, to their credit, they answered in plentiful. Questions also touched on personal passions, such as rowing, of which the Twins were famously capable.

Winklevoss Twins Think That Bitcoin Will Be Top in the Long Run

One of the more popular questions posed, “Do you think Bitcoin will allways [sic] be Crypto #1?”, elicited the following confidence response:

Bitcoin is certainly the OG crypto! It’s hard to defeat network effects — so in terms of ‘hard money’ (i.e., store of value) Bitcoin is most likely the winner in the long term.

The Twins have long been bullish on Bitcoin, frequently calling it “digital gold” and the mechanism by which future monetary transactions will be made. That belief is called upon and cemented further in another question where a user pointed to a Winklevoss statement in a 2014 AMA where the twins had said that they expected a Bitcoin price of $40,000:

Our thesis around bitcoin’s upside remains unchanged. We believe bitcoin is better at being gold than gold. If we’re right, then over time the market cap of bitcoin will surpass the ~7trillion dollar market cap of gold.

Some Tougher Questions Answered

Gemini Exchange is still very much a work in progress, not offering tokens and features that other exchanges across the world serve. One such feature is the implementation of Bitcoin’s latest technology, expressed in the following exchange:

If you’re so committed to Bitcoin, why hasn’t your exchange implemented the latest Bitcoin technology yet? Things like implementing Segwit and transaction batching would not only benefit both your exchange and your customers but also the network as a whole. Our Bitcoin hot wallet was made before Segwit was but a twinkle in Pieter Wuille’s eye. It would be very tricky to retrofit Segwit into there. So we built a new hot wallet, from the ground up, with support for Segwit, transaction batching, Bech32 addresses, and all sorts of other goodies. We used that new system for Zcash, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Cash, which is why we’re already using both native and P2SH wrapped Segwit for Litecoin. We’re working on migrating Bitcoin to the new system, and it should be done in Q1.

Gemini has also been trying, unsuccessfully so far, to get a Bitcoin Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF) approved. Once again displaying confidence, the Twins briefly explained their plan to get an ETF approved,

What’s your short term plan to gain approval on Crypto ETFs and longer term where do you see STOs? Great questions. We understand the Commission’s concerns and are working hard to address them (i.e., increased marketplace surveillance) w/ the following steps: Marketplace Conduct Rules – we implemented this to foster a rules-based marketplace.

Marketplace Surveillance – we have have partnered with Nasdaq to implement Nasdaq’s SMARTS Market Surveillance technology to monitor the Gemini marketplace.

Market Surveillance Team – we have built an in-house team to monitor out marketplace for manipulative and deceptive practices.

Virtual Commodities Association – we are helping stand up an industry-sponsored self-regulatory organization for virtual commodity exchanges. We are committed as ever to making an ETF a reality!

In a separate answer, they said that “…we will definitely start to see some real and interesting crypto-native STO use-cases in 2019 and this will only continue to grow and pick up steam over time.”

Gemini Proudly Entering 2019

The Winklevoss Twins are the minds behind the Gemini Exchange, has also launched the Gemini Dollar, a stablecoin pegged to the US Dollar. The New York-based exchange,proudly advertising that it is a regulated cryptocurrency exchange, as seen in the many advertisements cropping up on Wall Street and other places, has had a stellar 2018, putting it in shape to become one of America’s top cryptocurrency exchanges.

One user questioned the use of the phrase “regulated cryptocurrency exchange” in these advertisements, to which they responded,

We know we aren’t going to please everyone but the healthiest and most vibrant economies have thoughtful rules to promote positive outcomes. You can’t point to a lawless economy that is thriving. To be clear, there are exchanges and custodians that subscribe to our principles and it’s encouraging to see that we are not alone in this regard — but for us this is a core focus and something we have worked hard to be thought-leaders in.

The Gemini Exchange currently offers Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Zcash (ZEC), though there are plans to offer more tokens in the near future. Trade volume for the exchange currently hovers at around $20 million over 24 hours.

Of course, there was one tough question that the twins smartly avoided: one user asked if “Do you love that everyone hates zuck [referring to Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook] now?”, to which there no was response. Though they did say that the Facebook-genesis story of the The Social Network was a “Great film, great story, but certainly not the full story.”