Tyler Winklevoss, chief executive officer and co-founder of Gemini Trust Co., left, and Cameron Winklevoss, president and co-founder of Gemini Trust Co., speak during the Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami, Florida, U.S., on Friday, June 4, 2021.Eva Marie Uzcategui | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesCameron Winklevoss and Barry Silbert were both early believers in bitcoin who made a fortune on their investments and built big businesses along the way. For nearly two years, they enjoyed a mutually beneficial partnership that made their customers a lot of money.Now, the bitcoin heavyweights are in a bruising war of words that illustrates the depths of the crypto crisis and underscores the risks that were ultimately shouldered by ordinary investors who got caught up in a massively unregulated market. As it stands, hundreds of millions of dollars of customer cash sits in inaccessible limbo as the two crypto entrepreneurs battle over who is responsible.Silbert is the founder of Digital Currency Group (DCG), a crypto conglomerate that includes the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust and trading platform Genesis. Winklevoss, along with his brother Tyler, co-founded Gemini, a popular crypto exchange that, unlike many of its peers, is subject to New York banking regulation.Winklevoss and Silbert were linked through an offering called Earn, a nearly two-year-old product from Gemini that promoted returns of up to 8% on customer deposits. With Earn, Gemini loaned client money to Genesis for placement across various crypto trading desks and borrowers.As the digital coin markets soared in 2020 and 2021, that capital produced high returns fo …
