Winklevoss Twins: ‘Cash Is Going to be Killed’

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by Zhanna Lyasota · 3 min read
Winklevoss Twins: ‘Cash Is Going to be Killed’
Photo: James Dorsett/Flickr

The Winklevoss twins has discussed digital currency at annual tech conference SXSW Interactive Festival.

On March 16th, Winklevoss twins has discussed digital currency during a talk Bitcoin: What It Needs To Succeed , one of the sessions of annual tech conference SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas.

During the discussion, Winklevoss twins expressed their opinion that the digital currency needs advanced financial tools that allow the public to get involved without the fear of being taken advantage of.

Furthermore, they believe that digital currency will effectively end the use of cash, credit cards and other services such as PayPal: “Cash is going to be killed. It will be nostalgia … You’ll tell your grandkids about the wallet, it was this thing made of leather.”

Cameron Winklevoss told the crowd that he didn’t have his wallet with him. “I didn’t want to sit on it for an hour,” he said. “It would hurt my butt.”

We do know that the twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss are not afraid of fluctuating price of Bitcoin since the announcement of building the first regulated Bitcoin exchange in the U.S. named Gemini.

Besides, according to CNNMoney, they predicted in January that Bitcoin’s market capitalization could easily shoot up to at least $400 billion, or approximately the combined size of modern day payments companies like American Express, Visa, MasterCard and Western Union.

Moreover, the twins considered that Bitcoin could one day transform into a gold-like asset class or even exceed it. “If Bitcoin is a better gold or seen as a type of gold-like asset, then it could be in the trillions on a market cap. We do feel those are very real possibilities,” Tyler Winklevoss said in an interview to CNNMoney.

Cameron Winklevoss shared his opinion on Bitcoin during a presentation at ETF.com’s Inside ETFs Conference in January, 2015: “It’s a buying opportunity. We’ve never sold a Bitcoin. We’re in it for the long haul. People get fixated on the cost. It’s going to have lots of gyrations, but it’s new and you have to bare with it.”

The brothers are planning to open Gemini due to a large number of unregulated and offshore exchanges in the U.S. “With a bitcoin exchange you have to build it like you are a real financial institution,” said Tyler Winklevoss. “Most bitcoin losses have not been due to theft or hacking, It has been due to user error. It is people forgetting their passwords or losing their keys.”

In an official blog post, the twins described Gemini as “a next generation bitcoin exchange”. Besides, the Twins hope that Geminy will become the “Nasdaq of Bitcoin. “It’s true that Bitcoin’s promise is a new, frictionless money, but that all becomes academic if we don’t build towards an ecosystem that is free of hacking, fraud and security breaches,” they wrote.

The twins stated that they partnered with a New York State-chartered bank in order to increase people’s confidence in digital currency. They explained that the money of exchange users will never leave the country and will be securely held in their bank accounts. Besides, the dollars will be eligible for FDIC insurance and will be kept by a US-regulated bank.

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