Mark Cuban Owns Twice as Much BTC as ETH
3 min read
In a recent podcast, Shark Tank billionaire and entrepreneur Mark Cuban revealed how he allocated the crypto in his investment portfolio.
Though he didn’t disclose the value of his crypto portfolio when he appeared on the Delphi Podcast on March 25, the billionaire entrepreneur, Dallas Mavericks owner and Shark Tank investor, said that he owns “60 percent BTC, 30 percent ETH and 10 percent the rest.”
The revelation—particularly that he owns double the amount of BTC to ETH—is surprising given that Cuban usually sings the praises of ETH, not BTC. “It’s the closest to a true currency,” he said of ETH. On the value of his ETH holdings, he only expressed regret: “I wish I had bought it sooner, but I started buying it four years ago.”
Cuban credited the recent boom of the decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible token (NFT) industry as his source of excitement about crypto, likening the development of smart contracts on the ETH blockchain to the Internet boom in the late 90s and early 2000s.
“What really changed everything was smart contracts,” Cuban said. “Smart contracts came along, and that created DeFi and NFTs. That’s what changed the game. That’s what got me excited. That’s why it’s a lot like the Internet.”
In a previous interview on March 1 with Decrypt’s Editor-in-Chief Daniel Roberts, Cuban was adamant that ETH will eventually “disrupt the f— out of” big software companies. The “simplification of smart contracts” on ETH, he told Decrypt, will drive that shift.
Mark Cuban: BTC is Better than Gold
Unlike ETH, Cuban said he owns BTC because it’s a better alternative than gold. For that comparison, the Internet analogy no longer applies.
“With BTC, you could do transfers. […] And it was a store value and that was awesome. It’s a better alternative to gold, which is phenomenal. It’s taking money away from gold and it’s going to continue. And that’s why I own BTC,” he said.
Cuban did not specify what the rest of his crypto investment portfolio, accounting for 10%, represents. It could well be DeFi given he gushed in late January that DeFi protocols give money back to users, unlike Robinhood.
For RH Traders that own $GME that money, as best I can tell, is held in street name. Which means that 30% APR goes 100pct to @RobinhoodApp
. Imagine if you pooled your crypto and the platform was getting 30% APY and didnt pay all but fees to you ? What would happen ?
— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) January 29, 2021
In the past, he has also flirted with the meme-based crypto Dogecoin, making his Dallas Mavericks among the first merchants to start accepting DOGE. “It’s fun, engaging, and [will] hopefully generate a lot of PR,” he said in a press release following the news. Personally, Cuban invested $10 in DOGE to teach his son about crypto.
So what other crypto is Cuban eyeing?
