Mezrich - Bitcoin Billionaires: A True Story of Genius, Betrayal and Redemption

February 22, 2008.

The twenty-third floor of a nondescript office tower on the outskirts of San Franciscos Financial District.

The usual glass, steel, and concrete sliced and diced into overly air-conditioned, brightly lit cubes. Eggshell-colored walls and industrial-beige carpets. Fluorescent strips bisecting tic-tac-toe tiled dropped ceilings. Bug-eyed watercoolers, chrome-edged conference tables, faux-leather adjustable chairs.

It was a little past three on a Friday afternoon, and Tyler Winklevoss stood by a floor-to-ceiling window overlooking a pincushion of similar office buildings piercing the midday fog. He was trying his best to sip filtered water from a tissue-thin disposable cup, without spilling too much onto his tie. After so many days, months, hell, years, the tie was hardly necessary. The longer this ordeal dragged on, the more likely it was that sooner or later hed show up to the next endless session wearing his Olympic rowing jacket.

He managed to get the barest taste of water before the cup folded inward beneath his fingers, rivulets missing his tie but drenching the sleeve of his dress shirt. He tossed the cup toward a trash can beneath the window, shaking his damp wrist. Another thing to add to the list. Paper cups shaped like ice-cream cones. What kind of sadist came up with these?

Maybe the same guy who invented the lights. Ive gotten two shades tanner since they moved us to this floor. Forget pits of fire, Im betting purgatory is lined with fluorescent tubes.

Tylers brother, Cameron, was stretched out across two of the faux-leather chairs on the other side of the room, his long legs propped up against the corner of a rectangular conference table. He was wearing a blazer but no tie. One of his size fourteen leather shoes rested perilously close to the screen of Tylers open laptop, but Tyler let it slide. It had already been a long day.

Tyler knew the tedium was by design. Mediation was different from litigation. The latter was a pitched battle, two parties trying to fight their way to victory, what mathematicians and economists would call a zero-sum game. Litigation had highs and lows, but beneath the surface there lurked a primal energy; at its heart, it was war. But mediation was different. When properly conducted, there wasnt a winner or a loser, just two parties who compromised their way to a resolution, who split the baby. Mediation didnt feel like war. It was more like a really long bus ride that ended only when everyone on board got tired enough of the scenery to agree on a destination.

If you want to be accurate, Tyler said, turning back to the window and the gray on gray of another Northern California afternoon, were not the ones in purgatory.

Whenever the lawyers were out of the room, Tyler and Cameron did their best not to dwell on the case itself. There had been plenty of that in the beginning. They had once been so filled with anger and a feeling of betrayal that they could hardly think of anything else. But as the weeks turned into months, they had decided that anger wasnt doing their sanity any good. As the lawyers kept telling them, they had to trust in the system. So when they were alone, they tried to talk about anything but what had brought them to this place.

That they were now on the topic of medieval literature, specifically Dantes conception of the many circles of hell, showed that the avoidance strategy was beginning to fray; trusting the system had seemingly trapped them in one of Dantes inventions. Even so, it gave them something to focus on. As teenagers growing up in Connecticut, Tyler and Cameron had both been obsessed with Latin. With no courses left to take by senior year of high school, they petitioned their school principal to let them form a Medieval Latin Seminar with the Jesuit priest who was the director of the Latin program. Together, the twins and the father translated the