Zuckerberg met with Winklevoss twins about Facebook developing cryptocurrency: report

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg met with Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss recently as his company considers launching its own cryptocurrency.

The Financial Times reported Thursday that Zuckerberg met with the Winklevoss twins and executives with Coinbase, a popular online cryptocurrency exchange, as the company considers partnering with the company and others such as Gemini, the exchange founded by the Winklevoss brothers.

Zuckerberg’s past legal conflict with the twins was one of the defining plot points of “The Social Network,” the Academy Award-winning movie based on Zuckerberg’s rise to power as Facebook’s founder. The two brothers claimed in legal proceedings to have come up with the original idea for Facebook while students at Harvard with Zuckerberg.

Both Coinbase’s and Gemini’s spokespeople declined to comment to The Financial Times on discussions with Facebook.

At Facebook’s developer conference in April, Zuckerberg indicated that he was interested in Facebook becoming a tool for sending money quickly, a feature that would be a core part of the company’s entrance into the cryptocurrency realm.

“When I think about all the different ways that people interact privately, I think payments is one of the areas where we have an opportunity to make it a lot easier,” he said at the conference, according to CNBC.

“I believe it should be as easy to send money to someone as it is to send a photo,” he reportedly added last month.