Benzinga | Nov 19, 2021 12:17PM EST

Bitcoin Exchange Gemini Raises $400M To Build A Metaverse Outside Facebook's Walled Garden

The Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) billionaire brothers who made a fortune off of Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) have decided to finally raise outside capital.

Gemini, the cryptocurrency platform and exchange founded by twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, has announced $400 million in funding in a round led by Morgan Creek Digital. Jay Z's Marcy Venture Partners, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, 10T, Newflow Partners, and ParaFi also contributed. The growth equity round rockets the value of Gemini to $7.1 billion. If the epic competition between the twins and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is a tortoise vs. hare scenario, now is starting to look like the moment momentum shifts.

"There's these two parallel paths, in terms of technology right now," says Cameron Winklevoss, 40, speaking from his home in California. "There's a centralized path, like Facebook or Fortnite, that is one step away from being a metaverse, and that's totally fine. But there is another path, which is the decentralized metaverse and that's the metaverse where we believe there's greater choice, independence and opportunity, and there is technology that protects the rights and dignity of individuals."

Gemini has other tricks up its sleeve, including a bid to help create a decentralized version of the metaverse, a version of the internet that blends virtual and augmented realities. That will pit them against their nemesis, Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg, who is hard at work on a for-profit version of the metaverse, even though the company's stablecoin ambitions have thus far foundered.

With $400 million more to play with, expect more to be coming from the firm.

"We are incredibly excited to continue to build on the frontier of crypto and give individuals around the world greater choice, independence, and opportunity through crypto," said Gemini President Cameron Winklevoss.