Mark Cuban Owns Twice as Much Bitcoin as Ethereum

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, who also owns the Dallas Mavericks, said that he owns “60 percent Bitcoin, 30 percent Ethereum and 10 percent the rest.”

The revelation—particularly that he owns double the amount of Bitcoin to Ethereum—is surprising given that Cuban usually sings the praises of Ethereum, not Bitcoin. “It’s the closest to a true currency,” he said of Ethereum. 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 Ethereum 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 Ethereum will eventually “disrupt the f--- out of” big software companies. The "simplification of smart contracts" on Ethereum, he told Decrypt, will drive that shift.

Mark Cuban: Bitcoin is Better than Gold

Unlike Ethereum, Cuban said he owns Bitcoin because it’s a better alternative than gold. For that comparison, the Internet analogy no longer applies.

“With Bitcoin, 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 Bitcoin,” 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.

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?