Mark Cuban has sold most of his Bitcoin holdings and now describes the crypto space as "disappointing". Bitcoin failed as an inflation hedge, the entrepreneur says, and the price currently sits roughly 38% below its all-time high of 126,198 USD.
Cuban is a US entrepreneur, investor and co-owner of the NBA team Dallas Mavericks, also known as a former judge on the show "Shark Tank". In the crypto space, he was regarded as a prominent advocate from 2020 onward, holding a portfolio of 60% Bitcoin, 30% Ethereum and 10% smaller tokens. In January 2025, he still recommended Bitcoin as a superior hedging instrument over gold. The interview documenting his change of course appeared at Front Office Sports and was later picked up by Fortune.
Mark Cuban's shift in position on Bitcoin
Cuban's involvement began early and visibly. Back in 2019, the Dallas Mavericks became the first major NBA team to accept Bitcoin for tickets and merchandise. In March 2021, Dogecoin followed as a means of payment, and its payment inflows rose by 550% in the first four weeks. Later, in October 2021, the team entered a five-year partnership with the crypto broker Voyager Digital. At the time, the entrepreneur reportedly read about cryptocurrencies for three to four hours a day. Moreover, he called Bitcoin "better gold than gold itself", while ranking Ethereum as the closest thing to a real currency.
However, the conviction developed cracks early on. In July 2022, Voyager Digital filed for bankruptcy. As a result, Cuban and the Mavericks were named in a class action that described the broker as a Ponzi scheme. That same year, the investor also lost capital in the collapse of the Iron Finance token TITAN. Nevertheless, in 2024 he suggested that the conditions for a price acceleration in Bitcoin were favorable. Furthermore, in January 2025 he again recommended the asset over gold should economic conditions deteriorate. That recommendation now stands in sharp contrast to his most recent move: the sale of most of his Bitcoin holdings in May 2026, while he kept his Ethereum position.
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The Iran crisis as a turning point for the Bitcoin hedging thesis
The concrete trigger was the Iran crisis, which began in late February 2026 and escalated in March, before a ceasefire followed in mid-April. In the early phase, Bitcoin behaved contrary to Cuban's expectation. Gold climbed to a high of around 5,400 USD on 2 March, while Bitcoin initially fell. At the same time, the oil price jumped from around 73.50 USD per barrel to as much as 120 USD, a gain of about 64%. This early phase specifically undermined the "digital gold" thesis that Cuban had cultivated for years.
"When the Iran war broke out, Bitcoin was always seen as the best alternative to fiat currencies that lose value, and I always considered it a better version of gold than gold itself. Gold exploded and rose to 5,000 USD. Bitcoin fell. It is not the hedge I had expected." - Mark Cuban, entrepreneur and investor
Bitcoin, by contrast, remains strongly correlated with the Nasdaq, which further weakens the gold thesis. Consequently, institutional trading desks often group Bitcoin and the technology index together. Therefore, a Nasdaq slump frequently triggers Bitcoin sales to cover margin calls. However, the hedging behavior shows up with a time lag. During the tariff announcements in April 2025, gold rose 4% in the first ten days while Bitcoin barely moved, yet after 60 days Bitcoin was ahead at 23% and gold at only 6%. Likewise, in the Iran crisis the picture reversed over the full period: gold fell to around 4,000 USD at one point before recovering to about 4,700 USD in late April.
Cuban's verdict on the crypto industry with Ethereum as the exception
Cuban's disappointment reaches beyond price. He dismisses memecoins across the board as "garbage". More serious, however, is his accusation that the industry has failed, despite years of development, to create an everyday application for the mass market, loosely put "an app for grandma". He largely spares Ethereum here and kept this position even after the Bitcoin sale.
The historical irony in this argument is striking. Of all teams, the Mavericks co-run by Cuban once accepted Dogecoin, a memecoin, for tickets and merchandise, and recorded a 550% rise in the corresponding payments in the first weeks. His current skepticism is no novelty either. As early as 2013, he made critical comments on Twitter. In 2014 he stated that Bitcoin had "no chance" as a long-term currency. Subsequently, in 2019, by his own account, he preferred bananas to an investment in Bitcoin. Only later came the turn toward advocate.
