I recently came across a pretty interesting story about how the Winklevoss brothers turned from social media controversy into pioneers in the crypto space. Honestly, their experience really illustrates a lesson: sometimes failure is what pushes you toward even greater success.

Back in 2012, the Winklevoss brothers had $11 million in cash from their lawsuit against Facebook. At that time, Bitcoin was still something very few people understood, and its trading price was only $120 per coin. Most Wall Street elites and tech insiders laughed at them for being foolish, but these two bet their $11 million to buy 120,000 Bitcoins, accounting for 1% of the circulating supply at the time. Looking back now, this investment looks like a stroke of genius.

What’s interesting is that when they put this money in, they had no burden of a traditional finance background at all. Cameron has said in an interview that precisely because they didn’t understand the “Wall Street ways,” they were able to see the opportunity of this new system of Bitcoin. They believed Bitcoin offered a new kind of independence and possibility, rather than just a tool for speculation.

The later moves made by the Winklevoss brothers also proved this point. In 2015, they founded Gemini, becoming one of the earliest platforms in the industry to obtain regulatory approval. In 2018, they also launched the Gemini dollar stablecoin—an even earlier move than Facebook’s later Libra. To this day, they’re still pushing for the listing of Bitcoin ETFs, hoping to bring this asset into a more regulated financial system.

Historically speaking, the Winklevoss brothers’ contribution to the crypto industry is far more than just investment returns. They have continued to hold the vast majority of their Bitcoin (selling only a small portion to help get Gemini started), and they even printed out their private keys to store them in safety deposit boxes around the country. This kind of long-term mindset is indeed rare in a market full of hype.

Of course, they’ve also encountered some setbacks. For example, they lost $1 million on an investment in Charlie Shrem’s BitInstant, and later even went to court over it. But none of these setbacks shook their confidence in the industry.

Looking back now, the Winklevoss brothers’ transformation from the losers of Facebook to advocates in the crypto world is in itself something worth thinking about. They proved through their actions that in an emerging field, vision and patience often matter more than a traditional background. Bitcoin has risen from $120 to $81,750 today—over the past decade, pioneers like the Winklevoss brothers have certainly paved the way for a lot of progress across the entire industry.