Winklevoss Twins Launch Winkdex Bitcoin Index The brothers Winklevii make a bold step toward digital currency domination

By Kim Lachance Shandrow Feb 20, 2014

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss just majorly upped their Bitcoin game. The venture capitalist twins, best known for their high-profile legal clash over Facebook, have officially launched the Winklevoss Index, or the Winkdex for short.

The Winkdex, similar to CoinDesk's Bitcoin price index, is a "blended price index that is designed to reflect the true price of Bitcoins," according to a press release issued by the Winklevii, as the former Olympic rowers are sometimes referred to.

The New York-based Internet entrepreneurs announced the inception of the Winkdex in a regulatory filing the pair made Wednesday to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Winkdex, which, frankly, we think sounds a little too much like the household cleaner Windex, would be used to price the value of the cryptocurrency held by the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust, an exchange-traded fund the brothers are hoping to gain SEC approval for. If the fund is sanctioned, it would be the first-ever publicly traded U.S. Bitcoin fund.

Here's the scoop direct from the filing:

"Math-Based Asset Index, LLC ("Index Provider") [the twins' firm — ed.] developed, calculates and publishes Winkdex on a continuous basis using a patent-pending mathematical formula developed for such purpose. The formula provides a volume-weighted, exponential moving average market price by blending trading data from the largest Bitcoin Exchanges by volume on a list of Sponsor-approved Bitcoin Exchanges. Bitcoin Exchange criteria for inclusion as a Winkdex constituent include (i) trading denominated in US Dollar, (ii) availability of trading data, (iii) volume criteria and (iv) lack of recent trading halts. The Index Provider maintains a monitoring system that tests for these criteria on an ongoing basis."

As of 11:52 a.m. ET today, the price of the volatile virtual currency was $583.54, according to none other than the Winkdex, which already has a pretty slick website.

Winklevoss Twins Launch Winkdex Bitcoin Index

Kim Lachance Shandrow

Former West Coast Editor

Kim Lachance Shandrow is the former West Coast editor at Entrepreneur.com. Previously, she was a commerce columnist at Los Angeles CityBeat, a news producer at MSNBC and KNBC in Los Angeles and a frequent contributor to the Los Angeles Times. She has also written for Government Technology magazine, LA Yoga magazine, the Lowell Sun newspaper, HealthCentral.com, PsychCentral.com and the former U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. C. Everett Coop. Follow her on Twitter at @Lashandrow. You can also follow her on Facebook here.

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