Winklevoss Father Donates $4M Bitcoin to Satoshi School

Winklevoss donates $4M in Bitcoin to Grove City College, the institution’s first crypto gift, to support new business programs and promote money principles.

The father of the well-known crypto twins, Howard Winklevoss, is giving Grove City College a one-of-a-kind $4 million donation in Bitcoin {BTC}. At Grove City College, he first became interested in sound money and the Austrian school of economics, which in turn impacted Satoshi.

Grove City announced in a news release on Tuesday that the cryptocurrency donation made by the individual is the first that the institution has ever received and will be used to finance new business programs.

When Winklevoss discovered that Bitcoin was a non-government digital currency with a limited quantity, he claimed to have had his “eureka” moment—when cryptography first captured his interest. “In short, sound money that works like email.”

He initially heard about sound money at Grove City College while studying under Hans Sennholz, a free-market, Austrian-School economist and professor who studied under Ludwig von Mises. “Connecting the dots between this economic school of thought and what Satoshi created turned the light bulb on in my head,” stated Winklevoss.

In addition to investing in ether (ETH) and a few other cryptocurrency projects tackling intriguing issues, he purchased his first bitcoin in 2013.

Tyler Winklevoss responded briefly to a question about whether the twins were the ones who introduced their father to cryptocurrency. “When Cameron and I first discovered Bitcoin in 2012, no one called it crypto; it was just Bitcoin,” he stated. “There was no Ethereum white paper yet. We told our dad about Bitcoin shortly after first learning about it, so we were responsible for getting him into it.”

However, Tyler noted that, in retrospect, it was likely more accurate to say that his father introduced him to Bitcoin rather than the other way around. “I say this because, when attending Grove City College in the 1960s, he was greatly impacted by the Austrian school of economics that was taught there, and it was then that he first learned about the idea of sound money. It is also evident that this school of thought inspired Satoshi.”

He discussed these concepts frequently at home, which had an early impact on us and helped us appreciate the significance and worth of Bitcoin when we first learned about it, remembers Tyler.

“For the Austrian school, the best form of money was gold, but there are issues with gold such as portability and security,” Tyler stated. He noted that it “tends to become centralized and moves via IOUs when used as global money, so it loses its decentralized nature.”

Tyler remarked, “Satoshi took the best features of gold money and codified them into digital money. Because bitcoin is both an asset and a network, it is much easier to send worldwide—just like an email.” This addresses the issue of portability.”

According to his son, their father’s time at Grove City College significantly impacted him, so he wanted to give back.

Senior Winklevoss has had a very prosperous academic and commercial career. He joined the private sector after more than ten years of teaching actuarial science at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. He founded Winklevoss Consultants and Winklevoss Technologies, which Constellation Software purchased in 2023 for $125 million.

“Our father is the first tech startup entrepreneur we have ever encountered,” Tyler remarked, establishing software companies in the 1970s. Our upbringing in a startup atmosphere inspired us to build our own companies. Thus, Grove City College deserves some credit for igniting our interest in bitcoin.”

The significant influencers on Howard Winklevoss’s career as a professor and businessman were his father, Grove City College, and his wife, Carol.

The mother of the twins supports digital assets as well. Tyler claims that she has been their biggest supporter from the beginning and thinks cryptocurrency is how money will be made in the future.

The Winklevoss School of Business will formally become known as such in November during an event held at the Staley Hall of Arts and Letters.