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.
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.
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.
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