The Dallas Mavericks may have started accepting bitcoin as payment, but Mark Cuban, the team’s owner, would rather have a bunch of bananas.
In a video from WIRED Magazine (h/t The Block), the outspoken Shark Tank investor was asked why he doesn’t like crypto, given that “ICO is the new IPO.”
“Here’s the thing about crypto, particularly Bitcoin,” answered Cuban. “Bitcoin is worth what somebody will pay for it.”
“Did you ever see someone who collected baseball cards, and they were really really really proud of their baseball cards because they kept saying that they will go up in price? Comic books, same thing, even artwork. There’s no real intrinsic value.”
It’s the same thing with Bitcoin, Cuban said, except that there’s less things you can do with it compared to baseball cards and art. “At least I can look at my baseball card and go ooh, that’s my favorite player – that’s Roberto Clemente! I can look at artwork,” he added.
On crypto adoption, Cuban said that crypto is a key that is basically too complex for most of the population to ever be of real use. “Do you put it in a device? Do you print it out? How do you keep it from being hacked? Who’s going to host it for you?” He asked, adding that “it’s just so difficult that it’s only worth what somebody will pay for it.”
Bitcoin, he continued, is basically like gold:
“Gold is a religion. Now, people who are really into gold, they’ll tell you that there’s a bad depression and things go to hell in a handbasket, if you own gold then you’ll be okay. No, you won’t! You carry around a gold bar someone’s gonna hit your ass, knock you out and steal your gold bar and it’s gonna happen again and again and again. I’d rather have bananas, I can eat bananas. Crypto, not so much.”
Having said all that, Cuban admitted that he could make a great argument for blockchain, saying “there’s a lot of applications, and they’ll be used.” You just don’t need public bitcoin – or any of the available cryptocurrencies – to make blockchain on your own, he said.
Photo: Gage Skidmore
