Billionaire investor and owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks Mark Cuban has invested an undisclosed amount in Polygon an Indian crypto startup working on improving Ethereum’s scalability.
CoinDesk confirmed the news shortly after Mark Cuban Companies listed the crypto project as an investment.
Known for his criticism of Bitcoin in the past, earlier this year, Cuban said that BTC is “a better alternative to gold.” He also revealed that his personal crypto portfolio comprises 60% Bitcoin, 30% Ethereum, with the remaining 10% accounting for several other smaller altcoins.
He has been a much more active voice in the crypto community in this cycle, frequently appearing on various podcasts to discuss his interest in the industry.
🔥 @mcuban is one of the most prolific and insightful investors with investments in top startups and he is also one of the Sharks on @ABCSharkTank.
🙌🏻 We're proud to share that @0xPolygon is now part of the Mark Cuban company portfolio!
— Polygon (previously Matic) (@0xPolygon) May 25, 2021
Founded in 2017 as Matic Network, Polygon was originally designed as an Ethereum sidechain providing faster and cheaper transactions. In February 2021, the project rebranded as Polygon, making a strategic shift to support additional Layer 2 solutions to reduce costs.
In recent months, Polygon has enjoyed heavy adoption within the decentralized finance (DeFi) space, after integrations with popular projects like Aave, Curve Finance, SushiSwap, and others. The technology has also been used among NFT creators and crypto gaming platforms.
1/ 🌅@decentraland, the biggest virtual world in the metaverse will scale with Polygon!
🔀 Starting with seamless $MANA transfer between Ethereum and Polygon and a @transak_finance fiat on-ramp, this is a larger effort to integrate the entire Decentraland ecosystem with Polygon. pic.twitter.com/vqB0XICLui
— Polygon (previously Matic) (@0xPolygon) April 1, 2021
Cuban is reportedly integrating Polygon into Lazy.com, a project building a new online gallery designed to easily display NFTs in any form.
"The best thing to hear was Mark Cuban himself uses applications on Polygon," Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder of Polygon, told The Economic Times. According to Nailwal, this is “a big stepping stone” for the project as it will help attract more U.S.-based investors.
MATIC, the project’s native token, has seen an impressive 27% rise in the past 24 hours on the back of the news of Cuban’s investment, hitting the $2.35 mark in the early hours on Wednesday, with the market cap surpassing $13.5 billion.
Daily Debrief Newsletter
Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.
The software developer who turned up on the call for an interview with UK verification startup Cheqd a few months ago ticked all the right boxes. Based somewhere in Europe, he knew his stuff, had some experience, and spoke good English.
However, when they returned for the second round of the interview process and a live programming test, their accent had become distinctly more Asian, their internet connection was lagging, and their camera wouldn’t switch on.
More concerningly, when the team at...
ReserveOne, a newly formed digital assets management firm, will debut on the Nasdaq through a $1 billion business combination with M3-Brigade Acquisition V, a blank-cheque company, both firms said in a press release on Tuesday.
Mirroring U.S. President Donald Trump’s Bitcoin reserve and digital asset stockpile, ReserveOne plans to accumulate Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana, among other cryptocurrencies that could be leveraged in staking and lending, the companies said.
Under the business combinati...
BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) has broken the 700,000 BTC barrier, according to Glassnode data, just a year and a half after its debut in January 2024. That makes its assets under management worth just under $75.6 billion at today's values, per CoinGecko data.
The Bitcoin exchange-traded fund is now the third most profitable fund by revenue at the world's largest asset manager, outstripping both the iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (IVV) and the iShares Russell 2000 ETF (IWM).
IBIT has surpas...