Buoyed to fame by their legal battle with Mark Zuckerberg, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss have spent years trying to prove their own business bona fides, culminating in Friday’s planned IPO of their crypto exchange, Gemini. But another public feud—this time with Brian Quintenz, President Trump’s nominee to lead the Commodity Futures Trading Commission—has created a cloud of controversy around their public market debut.
The Winklevoss twins have long been top figures in the crypto industry, first as vocal cheerleaders for Bitcoin, then as the founders of Gemini, the exchange they founded in 2014. Though Gemini has lagged behind its competitors like Coinbase, the Winklevoss twins have ridden crypto’s latest boom—and the public market success of other companies such as Circle and Bullish—to their own IPO, which is targeting a valuation over $3 billion. With trading set to begin on Friday, however, the Winklevoss twins’ entanglement with Quintenz’s nomination could serve as a distraction.
