Mark Cuban’s Bizarre Bitcoin Rant Includes Baseball Cards and Bananas

Tech billionaire and Shark Tank personality Mark Cuban launched a savage takedown of bitcoin in a Wired video this weekend.

He reeled off a list of well-trodden criticisms of the cryptocurrency, comparing it to baseball cards and slamming its ‘lack of intrinsic value.’

In a truly bizarre statement, he said he’d rather own bananas than bitcoin. Last time I checked, bananas weren’t the best-performing asset of the decade.

Billionaire Mark Cuban: Bitcoin has ‘no intrinsic value’

Cuban began his remarks by comparing bitcoin to baseball cards.

“Here’s the thing about crypto, particularly bitcoin. Bitcoin is worth what someone will pay for it. Did you ever see someone collect baseball cards? And they were really, really, really proud of their baseball cards because they kept on saying they were gonna go up in price. Comic books, the same thing. Even artwork. There’s no real intrinsic value.”

In fact, he said BTC is worse than baseball cards.

“Bitcoin, there’s even less you can do with it. At least I can look at my baseball card and say “ooh, that’s my favorite player, that’s Roberto Clemente. I can look at artwork and go ‘wow.’”

BTC? Cuban would rather have bananas

This isn’t the first time Cuban has criticized cryptocurrencies. As CCN reported, he previously said he hates bitcoin and gold “with extreme prejudice” and would rather own a pet rock. In this week’s Wired video, he doubled down on the gold comparison.

“I say [bitcoin is] like gold. Gold’s a religion. People who are really into gold will tell you there’s a really bad depression and things go to hell in a hand basket. If you own gold then you’ll be okay. No you won’t! If you carry around a gold bar, someone’s gonna hit your ass, knock you out and steal your gold bar. I’d rather have bananas. I can eat bananas. Crypto, not so much.”

Mark Cuban is one of Shark Tank’s high-profile members. | Source: Kathy Hutchins/Shutterstock

Despite his criticism, he still promised that the Dallas Mavericks would accept BTC payment.

The old ‘blockchain, not bitcoin’ argument

To cap it all off, Cuban trots out the ‘blockchain, not bitcoin’ excuse.

“Look, I can make a great argument for blockchain, there’s a lot of applications you can use. You don’t need public bitcoin BTC. You can create blockchain on your own without using all the available cryptocurrencies.”

‘Blockchain, not bitcoin’ has been the go-to argument from traditional investors who are reluctant to embrace bitcoin itself (despite the fact that blockchain technology hasn’t added much-proven value to traditional business).

Blockchain isn’t the revolution. Digital scarcity is the revolution which is why bitcoin matters. Or maybe we should all start buying bananas?

Last modified (UTC): September 30, 2019 9:43 AM

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