Mark Cuban Says DeFi Has Potential to Explode in WallStreetBets AMA

Mark Cuban—billionaire, Dallas Mavericks owner, and Shark Tank guy—stopped by the r/wallstreetbets subreddit for an AMA session on the future of mob-mentality retail trading.

Topics included the trading app Robinhood’s decision to restrict Gamestop and AMC stock as prices soared (Cuban is anti!), the SEC (also anti!), and how to identify the next big investment area.

One user asked Cuban, “What industry that is relatively small now has the potential to explode in the next 10 years?” 

“DeFi, NFTs,” wrote Cuban, before adding that “there will be a lot of ups and downs along the way.”

DeFi, or decentralized finance, is a catch-all term for certain kinds of non-custodial protocols and crypto investment projects. The amount of crypto locked up in these DeFi protocols last year went from $700 million to over $15 billion. It now stands at over $28 billion, per data from DeFi Pulse.

The idea is that with DeFi, users can invest money without having to rely on a bank, and take advantage of appealing yields in the process. DeFi has shown potential for huge, quick returns, and also for debilitating hacks: according to the blockchain analytics firm CipherTrace, DeFi was among the top targets for crypto-related scams in 2020. 

Cuban has been spreading the DeFi gospel over the past week: in a Twitter thread, Cuban suggested that the Gamestop pumpers of r/wallstreetbets might have made more money in crypto.

The second part of Cuban’s answer, NFTs, are non-fungible tokens—unique collectibles like artworks and video game add-ons, typically on the Ethereum blockchain. These too have risen in popularity as of late. In 2020, the NFT market grew by more than 57% and topped $100 million in trading volume.

He’s also promoted NFTs, and revealed some of what’s in his own crypto wallet. Ever the forward thinker, he’s also apparently been hanging onto crypto from “the early days of Coinbase.”