Bitcoin is a purely digital property, and it can only be accessed by way of an individual key or password that allows users to get into their Bitcoin wallets. Anybody with the key can access the funds, and in the Winklevoss twins’ case, an added layer of security was desirable. That layer works like this: The twins printed off their shared Bitcoin key, cut it into multiple segments, and stored each segment in different safe deposit boxes in banks across the United States. Even if by some freak occurrence a thief manages to break into one Winklevoss safe deposit box, the individual part of the key found therein would be effectively useless. Outside of a Nicolas Cage heist movie, that means that the Winklevoss’ bitcoins are theirs and theirs alone – and according to them, back when they first purchased the stash that now requires new security measures to keep safe, they were laughed at for investing in a cryptocurrency, a fact that they say keeps them motivated in these new and different times: You might say that the Winklevoss twins are laughing all the way to several banks.
