Welcome to Texas ProRata, where we take just 10 minutes to get you smarter on the collision of tech, business, and politics.

So we are off until the new year, but wanted to share a few of our favorite segments from 2019.

And today's is from August and digs into the Bitcoin world's most

surprising and familiar billionaires.

Bitcoin billionaires.

So Bitcoin has been on a price roller coaster this year, going as low as $3,200 per Bitcoin

earlier in the year to above 12,000 Bitcoin, and today it's kind of

treading in the low $10,000 range.

But all of those prices, low and high, represent monumental, really almost unthinkable

returns for the Winklevoss twins.

Yet those Winklewoss twins, known to most folks as the Stodgy Harvard undergrads who sued Mark Zuckerberg

for stealing their idea for what would become Facebook.

Now, the Winklevye basically took their Facebook settlement money and began pumping it into Bitcoin,

which at the time was barely known outside of Reddit technology boards.

And since they began buying so low and apparently never sold, they're now not only billionaires,

but are believed to hold more Bitcoin than anyone outside of Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto,

who may or may not be alive, let alone may not have been a real person in the first place.

The Winklevye R, in short, how Greenwich, Connecticut came to Bitcoin and helped change everything

for cryptocurrencies.

That's why they're the subject of a new book by Ben Mesrick, who wrote accidental billionaires

about Facebook, which later became the movie The Social Network, and also bringing down

the house about the MIT kids who cracked Las Vegas blackjack.

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