Billionaire investor Mark Cuban said he sold most of his bitcoins holdings after losing confidence in the role of cryptocurrency as a hedge against weakening fiat currencies and geopolitical instability.
Cuban, whose net worth is about $10 billion, said bitcoin’s price action during the recent conflict with Iran called into question one of the main reasons he owned the asset during an episode of the “Portfolio Players” sports podcast, where he talked primarily about professional sports and his ownership of the Dallas Mavericks.
“When all this shit escalated with the Iran war, bitcoin was always the best alternative to fiat currency losing value and I always thought it was a better version of gold than gold. Well, gold just exploded… bitcoin fell. And every time the dollar fell, bitcoin should have gone up… and it just didn’t do that,” Cuban said.
The comments mark a notable shift for Cuban, who for years had publicly defended bitcoin as a superior version of gold due to its fixed supply and decentralized structure.
In a 2021 interview with “The Delphi Podcast,” Cuban said his cryptocurrency portfolio consisted of approximately “60% bitcoin, 30% Ethereum, and 10% of the rest.” At the time, he argued that bitcoin’s scarcity made it a stronger store of value than gold and said he had “never sold it.”
Cuban also compared blockchain technology and smart contracts to the early Internet era at the time, and particularly praised Ethereum (ETH) for enabling decentralized financial applications and NFTs.
His latest comments suggest that enthusiasm has cooled, at least towards bitcoin.
“It wasn’t the coverage I expected it to be, and that was really disappointing, so I would say I’m more disappointed with bitcoin, not as disappointed with Ethereum and the rest… garbage,” Cuban said.
The criticism comes as investors continue to debate bitcoin’s role in global markets. Supporters often describe the asset as “digital gold” that can protect wealth during inflation, geopolitical instability or weakness in traditional currencies. However, bitcoin has often been marketed more as a high-risk technology asset, rising and falling along with investors’ broader risk appetite.
Gold prices recently rose amid rising geopolitical tensions and concerns surrounding the US-Iran conflict, while bitcoin struggled to maintain momentum despite a weaker dollar.
Cuban’s comments also reflect a broader divide within crypto markets. While some investors remain focused on bitcoin as a macro hedge, others increasingly see value in blockchain networks like Ethereum, which support trading, payments and tokenized financial applications rather than functioning primarily as stores of value.
