How Tyler Winklevoss Converted His Biographer Into a Bitcoin Believer

Ben had the lucky chance - as he calls it - to already have an in with Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, as they had been portrayed as the Men of Harvard, slightly "Bad" guys in his book that ended up being adapted into the film "The Social Network." As Ben tells it, after he saw The New York Times article about their bitcoin billionaire success, a book about their crypto escapades that picks up right as their court battle with Mark Zuckerberg ends seemed to be an obvious next step.

The book spends almost 300 pages detailing the journey of how the Winklevoss twins have succeeded in crypto to the extent that it has wiped away the stain left by their battle over Facebook's origin with Zuckerberg, only to then coincide with Facebook's public unveiling of the Libra cryptocurrency project.

The twins, albeit very sincere bitcoin believers, could kind of care less about the sacredness of decentralization.

"If you're trying to be digital gold, decentralization may be the most important thing. If you're trying to be more like a currency, then perhaps you can give on decentralization for speed. So I think it is really good. All approaches are very valid and we'll sort of see how it plays out."

According to Tyler, there is no reason for bitcoin to even become a medium of exchange or a "Good currency" because of "How regulation is allowing that to play out, at least in the U.S.".

Ben - who admits that he knew almost nothing about cryptocurrency before he began this book - has become a bitcoin evangelist in a way that is abundantly clear both in the book and in our conversation.

Ben's goal in writing the book may have originally been to chase down his next interesting story, but his conversation with me sounds a lot like the Winklevoss twins in their early circuits of the crypto conferences - back when bitcoin was still in its nascency.

According to Ben, people have seemed to take his past books to heart - as he noted that "Accidental Billionaires" and "The Social Network" actually launched many people toward Silicon Valley - which could spread the bitcoin gospel even further.

Tyler agreed with Ben's assessment of the previous past influence of his books, noting that "If someone invested behind what Ben Mezrich found interesting, they'd probably have done pretty well."

Ben did add the caveat that "I foolishly never invest in anything I write about for a couple of reasons," stating that he didn't want to own bitcoin while also promoting his book, a highly moral stance for someone that also admitted he didn't buy Facebook stock when writing "Accidental Billionaires" almost a decade ago.