Howard Winklevoss, father of the famous crypto twins, donated $4 million in bitcoin to Grove City College, where he developed a passion for sound money and the Austrian school of economics that would later influence Satoshi.

The donation is the first bitcoin gift the university has received and will fund new business programs, according to a Grove City press release on Tuesday.

Winklevoss said his ‘eureka’ moment, when cryptocurrencies first caught his attention, was when he realized that bitcoin was a non-government digital currency with a fixed supply. “In short, it was solid money that worked like email.”

The Winklevoss family

He first learned about the principles of sound money at Grove City College under Hans Sennholz, a free-market economist from the Austrian school who had studied under Ludwig von Mises. “Connecting the dots between that school of economics and what Satoshi created made sense to me,” Winklevoss said.

He bought his first bitcoin in 2013, and then invested in ether (ETH) and a few other cryptocurrency projects that he saw as solving interesting problems.

When asked if the twins were influential in getting their father into the cryptocurrency space, Tyler Winklevoss said the short answer was yes. “When Cameron and I first discovered bitcoin in 2012, no one called it a cryptocurrency, it was just bitcoin,” he said. “There was no Ethereum white paper, we told our dad about bitcoin right after we first heard about it, so we definitely had an influence in getting him into bitcoin.”

But when he thinks about his father's gift to Grove City College, perhaps in some ways it was the other way around, Tyler says, and it was actually our father who got us into bitcoin. “I say this because he first discovered the principles of sound money when he was studying at Grove City College in the 1960s and was heavily influenced by the Austrian school of economics that was being taught there. That school of thought obviously influenced Satoshi as well.”

He used to talk about these ideas at home and this influenced us from a young age, Tyler recalled, and this helped us understand the importance and value of bitcoin when we discovered it.

“For the Austrian school, the best form of money is gold, but gold has problems like portability and security,” Tyler said, adding that “it tends to become centralized and move through debt notes when used as global money, so it loses its decentralization.”

“Satoshi took the best features of gold and encoded them into digital money,” Tyler noted, adding that “bitcoin is not just an asset, it’s a network, so it’s easy to send around the world, as easy as email. This solves the portability problem.”

Their father was greatly influenced by his time at Grove City College and thus had a desire to give back, his son said.

Winklevoss has had a very successful career in academia and business. After teaching computational science as a professor for over ten years at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, he entered the private sector. He founded several companies, including Winklevoss Consultants and Winklevoss Technologies, which was acquired by Constellation Software for $125 million in 2023.

“Our dad was the first tech entrepreneur we ever knew,” Tyler said, “he started software companies back in the seventies. We grew up in a startup environment and that influenced a lot of us to start our own startups. So ultimately, we have Grove City College to thank at least in part for our interest in bitcoin.”

Howard Winklevoss cites his father, Grove City College, and his wife Carol as the biggest influences on his career as a professor and an entrepreneur.

The twins' mother is also a strong advocate for digital assets. She believes cryptocurrencies are the future of money and beyond, and according to Tyler, she has been their biggest supporter from day one.

The business school will be officially named the ‘Winklevoss School of Business’ at a ceremony at the Staley Hall of Arts and Letters in November.

*A ‘eureka’ moment is a sudden, clear moment when someone finds a solution or understands something important. The term comes from the story of the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes, who shouted “Eureka!” (meaning “I have it!”) when he discovered the principle of buoyancy in water while taking a bath. In modern contexts, it is often used to describe a breakthrough moment or important discovery.

Source: https://tapchibitcoin.io/winklevoss-quyen-tang-4-trieu-usd-bitcoin-cho-truong-dai-hoc-truyen-cam-hung-cho-satoshi.html