Original Author: ChandlerZ, Foresight News
On May 21st, billionaire entrepreneur and former owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, Mark Cuban, stated on the Front Office Sports podcast that he had sold most of his Bitcoin holdings. He believes Bitcoin failed to effectively hedge against the risks of a weakening U.S. dollar and geopolitical turmoil, especially during the recent Iranian conflict. "When the Iran war sparked this chaos, Bitcoin was supposed to be the best alternative to fiat currency devaluation, and I always thought it was superior to gold. However, gold prices soared while Bitcoin fell. And whenever the dollar weakened, Bitcoin should have risen, but it didn't do that."
"I think Bitcoin has lost the plot."
2019: I'd Rather Have a Banana Than Bitcoin
Mark Cuban's initial public stance on crypto was skepticism. In September 2019, during a video Q&A with Wired magazine, he said, "I'd rather have a banana than Bitcoin because at least I can eat the banana." This statement has been repeatedly cited since. At that time, he analogized Bitcoin to baseball cards, comic books, and art, arguing it had no intrinsic value, and emphasized that crypto was too complex for 99% of people.
In reality, he had already entered the market earlier. In October 2017, Mark Cuban admitted in an interview with Bloomberg that he had purchased Bitcoin, viewing it as a "fun" addition to his portfolio. However, he stressed his position was very small at the time, treating it purely as a speculative gamble similar to collecting baseball cards or art.
2021: From Banana Advocate to Allocating 60% to Bitcoin
The shift occurred during the 2021 bull market, transforming Mark Cuban from an observer into one of crypto's most vocal proponents.
At the end of January, he minted his personal series "The RollUp 2021" on the NFT platform Rarible, tokenizing and releasing an animated GIF of himself dancing in a Mavericks jersey.
In March 2021, the Dallas Mavericks became the first NBA team to accept Dogecoin for ticket and merchandise payments. Mark Cuban's explanation was "because we can, and it gets a lot of PR." In the first month, the Mavericks sold approximately $122,000 worth of merchandise via DOGE. Two months later, DOGE hit its all-time high of $0.7375.
That same year, on The Delphi Podcast, he disclosed his crypto allocation: "About 60% Bitcoin, 30% Ethereum, 10% other," and emphasized, "I have never sold any Bitcoin." His rationale at the time was Bitcoin's fixed supply and decentralization, making it a superior store of value compared to gold.
June 2021: Schooled by Iron Finance
At the peak of the bull market, Mark Cuban received a lesson from DeFi.
In June 2021, he published a lengthy blog post titled "The Brilliance of Yield Farming, Liquidity Providing and Valuing Crypto Projects," publicly praising the algorithmic stablecoin project Iron Finance on the Polygon chain. He described himself as a major liquidity provider for the DAI/TITAN pair, with an initial investment of $75,000. Days later, TITAN plummeted from nearly $60 to near zero within 24 hours, wiping out approximately $2 billion from the protocol.
An IRON Finance analysis report stated the incident began when several whale addresses started selling, causing user panic and massive redemptions of IRON and sales of TITAN. Due to the operation of the 10-minute TWAP oracle, the spot price of TITAN fell further compared to the TWAP redemption price, creating a vicious cycle: the more IRON users redeemed, the more TITAN was minted, continuously driving its price down until TITAN crashed to near zero. IRON Finance also suspended USDC redemptions from its contracts.
Following the event, Mark Cuban did not publicly disclose the exact loss. In an email to Bloomberg, he only said the investment "wasn't large enough to warrant checking every detail" and that it constituted a small portion of his crypto holdings. He added, "I got rugged just like everyone else. Ironically, I had pulled some out, thinking their TVL was still rising, and then boom... Ultimately, I was lazy. This DeFi game is all about yield and math, and I didn't calculate the key metrics properly."
2022 to 2025: Tangling with Regulation, Being Sued and Winning
After the market cycle turned from bull to bear, Mark Cuban's crypto life shifted from buying coins to fighting lawsuits and clashing with regulators.
After crypto brokerage Voyager Digital filed for bankruptcy in 2022, retail investors sued Mark Cuban and the Mavericks, alleging he used the team's partnership to sell a "Ponzi scheme" to inexperienced young people. Mark Cuban repeatedly criticized former SEC Chair Gary Gensler in public, questioning why the SEC didn't provide clear rules first instead of compelling platforms to "come in and talk."
On December 30, 2025, the cryptocurrency class-action lawsuit accusing Mark Cuban and the Dallas Mavericks of defrauding investors by promoting Voyager Digital was dismissed. The lawsuit alleged Cuban made numerous false endorsements of the company before its 2022 bankruptcy filing. Cuban and his legal team, Brown Rudnick, stated in a declaration, "The lawsuit brought claims under numerous state securities laws and consumer fraud statutes. On December 30th, U.S. District Judge Roy K. Altman for the Southern District of Florida dismissed the case in its entirety."
In 2025, the billionaire also considered launching his own Memecoin but ultimately did not proceed. In his most recent commentary on cryptocurrency, he expressed disappointment stemming from NFTs and Ethereum, though this disappointment was not as severe as his current aversion to Bitcoin's state.
One Man, Seven Years, Three Reversals
Since the initial signs of U.S.-Iran conflict emerged in February 2026, Bitcoin has still accumulated a gain of approximately 16%, while gold has fallen about 15%, and Ethereum has risen about 9%. Mark Cuban saw a snapshot of the few days when the conflict escalated. Over a longer time window, Bitcoin actually outperformed gold. This doesn't negate his disappointment, but merely illustrates that his judgment this time was again an emotional decision highly dependent on the chosen timeframe.
The arc Mark Cuban has traced over these seven years almost perfectly mirrors the standard template for the past cycle of retail investors moving from skepticism to frenzy to disappointment. The next time he changes his mind will most likely be triggered simultaneously by macro narratives and price movements.
