A bitcoin exchange headed by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss announced Friday it hired a former New York Stock Exchange executive to head its technology team as it seeks to bring cryptocurrency to a wider market. Robert Cornish, former chief information office at NYSE, will begin his job as chief technology officer at New York-based Gemini later this month.
Cornish will join the exchange founded by the twins who made a fortune in cryptocurrency after settling a claim they came up the idea for Facebook. "Rob is a tremendous addition to our team," Gemini chief executive and co-founder Tyler Winklevoss said in a release.
Winklevoss and his brother, Cameron, earlier this year pitched a plan to create a body to police the wild digital money market. Bitcoin is independent of governments and banks and uses blockchain technology, where encrypted digital coins are created by supercomputers.
The virtual currency is not regulated by any central bank but is instead overseen by a community of users who try to guard against counterfeiting. Virtual currency exchanges have seen tremendous volatility, and have sparked concerns they can be used to launder money for criminal networks.
The Winklevoss twins are part of the story of Facebook's controversial genesis story. In 2008, a $65 million settlement was reached with three Harvard classmates - the Winklevoss twins and Divya Narendra - over their charges that Mark Zuckerberg had stolen the idea for Facebook from them.
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