This is why Mark Cuban thinks Ethereum is a “true currency”

Reynaldo Marquez

4 years ago

2 mins read

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In an interview for The Delphi Podcast, billionaire Mark Cuban talked about his experience with cryptocurrencies, the current state of the market, and the reasons behind his bullish perception of Bitcoin and Ethereum. For Cuban, cryptocurrencies and their applications are the next evolution of the internet.

Claiming that Bitcoin has “taken money away” from gold and “will continue to do so,” the billionaire separated the applications between one cryptocurrency and the other. For Cuban, the “most exciting” part about the crypto space is the emergence of decentralization and decentralized finance.

In that sense, he sees Ethereum as being much more comparable to the rise of the internet and its multiple use cases. Cuban stated:

When the Internet started to happen, you started seeing all these applications that could disrupt things that happened in the analog world (…). Now, you look at what’s happening and you saw smart contracts come along and (…) the fact that they’re decentralized, that’s what changed the game.

The entrepreneur believes that, over the past 25 years, internet costs have been reduced to the point where users can enjoy certain services, such as e-mail storage, free of charge. Combined with “decentralization, governance” and smart contracts, Internet applications have increased massively.

What has changed about Bitcoin and Ethereum?

Although Cuban was aware of the use cases for Bitcoin as far back as 2012, the entrepreneur felt that its limitations were going to prevent it from “working out”. However, he stressed again that its best application is as a store of value. On this idea, he claims has “always been positive.” Cuban stated:

(In 2012) people said bitcoin is a currency, and (I thought) ‘It’s just not going to work.’ But, the entire time, I said it was a store of value where, if you could get people to believe that it was a better alternative than gold, because of its algorithmic scarcity, the price is going to go up.

His full entry down the “rabbit hole” began when he had exposure to NFTs in January of this year. From there, he jumped to smart contracts, to the “ease of programming” with Solidity, which he described as a “game-changer.”

Another characteristic that cryptocurrencies share with internet companies in their early days is that, according to the entrepreneur, people have been unable to understand the value of this new asset class. In Cuban’s portfolio, the allocation on cryptocurrency stands at 60% Bitcoin, 30% Ethereum, and 10% for other tokens. Cuban regrets not entering the crypto market earlier:

I have a lot of Ethereum as well. I wish I had bought it sooner, but I started buying it four years ago, simply because I think it’s the closest we have to a true currency (…). The one difference (between crypto and stock market) I can look at the volume of a stock, but I get so much more transparent data with blockchain and tokens.

ETH is trading at $2,058 with 4.7% gains in the 24-hour chart. In the weekly and monthly chart, ETH presents gains of 37.5% and 29.7% respectively.

Reynaldo Marquez

A literature major, Reynaldo Márquez has been deeply immersed in the crypto industry since 2017. His journey began with translating articles for various crypto news outlets, a role he took on with zeal. In 2018, amidst a challenging market, he embraced his first writing assignment, demonstrating his unwavering commitment to the nascent industry and the promise of change it bears for many people worldwide.
In March 2021, he joined the prestigious crypto news outlet NewsBTC and Bitcoinist, where he not only reported on the latest crypto news but also had the privilege of interviewing some of the industry's most influential figures. A year later, his dedication and hard work were recognized, and he was promoted to Managing Editor, a position he currently holds with pride.
He believes in honesty, good communication, hard work, and the power of cryptocurrency and its potential to transform people's lives, especially those alienated by the legacy financial system. Born in 1992 in Venezuela, Reynaldo is familiar with how governments and central banks can negatively affect people, their everyday lives, and their futures by creating inflation and erasing their hopes for a better future. Thus, like many Venezuelans, he embraced this new technology to help him and his family navigate difficult times.
In another life, Reynaldo would have pursued a career as an investigator, most likely tracking down the origins of the Cyberpunk movement with the publication of William Gibson’s ‘Neuromancer.’ The intersection between fiction and reality, with the materialization of Bitcoin in 2009, would have allowed him to dive deep into the crypto sphere as something more than a financial phenomenon but also a cultural shift in society that was brewing since the XX century, and maybe even sooner, in the XIX century with the publication of Henry David Thoreau’s ‘Civil Disobedience.’
But that’s for another life. In this one, Reynaldo has been trading to improve his trading skills. Since 2023, he has been trying to learn Python to create successful strategies and find ways to execute them. It is a difficult task, which continues to keep him busy today and will most likely continue to keep him busy in the near and long term.
In his free time, he enjoys lifting heavy objects, reading, watching movies, and listening to his favorite music. Some of his favorite authors are Walt Whitman, William Faulkner, Allen Ginsberg, James Baldwin, Raymond Carver, Ray Bradbury, George Orwell, Mario Vargas Llosa, Reinaldo Arenas, Rafael Cadenas, and many others. Lately, he has been primarily interested in reading about dystopic societies, a topic that deeply resonates with the crypto industry.
Since 2023, he has lived in Spain with his wife. He loves the weather, the food, and the people and their culture. They both expect to travel much more within the country they now call home and beyond its border. He hopes to retire with his wife, maybe in a quiet place near a beach, but most likely in a city close to a library and a university with his kids and, hopefully, grandkids.

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