Mark Cuban’s latest claim about digital assets has triggered another round of scrutiny over his track record in crypto.
On Saturday afternoon, Cuban wrote on social media that chips, as an asset class, will become the new cryptocurrency. The comment climbed into trending discussions within a day and drew more than 1.2 million views, according to the report.
Protos said the reaction quickly turned into a running archive of Cuban’s earlier crypto calls. Over the past seven years, he has made repeated public judgments on crypto prices, projects and tokens that later drew criticism. Some of the related posts were deleted, and in a few cases the underlying investments or platforms later collapsed.
From the banana remark to Bitcoin’s later rise
In a 2019 interview with Wired, Cuban argued that Bitcoin had less intrinsic value than baseball cards, comic books or art. One of his best-known lines from that period continues to resurface: 「I’d rather have bananas because I can eat bananas. Crypto, not so much.」
Weeks later, he told Forbes that Bitcoin had 「no chance」 of becoming a reliable currency. The report says Bitcoin was trading at about $8,200 when Cuban made that bearish comment on Sept. 27, 2019. Since then, Bitcoin has risen 670%.
A deleted post comparing crypto with the internet bubble
In January 2021, Cuban wrote that cryptocurrency trading at the time resembled the late-1990s internet stock bubble. He later deleted that post.
Months after removing it, Cuban struck a different tone during a Twitter Spaces session, calling Bitcoin the 「best store of value」 and saying that he owned BTC.
Iron Finance’s 206% yield ended in a collapse
Protos revisited Cuban’s involvement with Iron Finance in June 2021 to explain why his stance looked much less settled by October of that year.
That summer, Cuban joined the wave of liquidity mining and published a blog post describing his experience as a liquidity provider in the DAI/TITAN pair, where he said he was earning roughly 206% annually. DAI was identified in the report as the stablecoin issued by MakerDAO, while TITAN was Iron Finance’s governance token.
Within days, TITAN fell from about $64 to nearly zero. Cuban then deleted the blog post. Iron Finance described the crash as a large-scale bank run, and the project never recovered.
In another post that was also later deleted, Cuban said he had taken losses along with other investors. He later told Bloomberg by email: 「I got hit like everyone else. The crazy part is I was lazy.」
Voyager Digital was not close to risk-free
Setbacks did not stop Cuban from backing other crypto businesses that year. In October 2021, the Dallas Mavericks announced Voyager Digital as the team’s first crypto sponsor in a five-year deal worth more than $25 million.
While promoting the platform, Cuban said Voyager’s yield was 「as close to risk free as you’re going to get in crypto.」 In July 2022, Voyager Digital filed for bankruptcy. Investors soon brought a class-action case, accusing Cuban of helping promote what they described as a Ponzi-like platform.
The report says a Florida court dismissed the suit last December on jurisdictional grounds. In June this year, investors asked an appeals court to revive the case.
Repeated Dogecoin promotion, then a much smaller disclosed holding
In March 2021, the Mavericks became the first NBA team to accept Dogecoin payments. On the day Cuban announced the move, DOGE rose 20%.
On Aug. 15 that year, he posted again, saying that Dogecoin’s flaws and simplicity were actually its greatest strengths. DOGE then jumped another 18% in a single day. Two days later, after criticism picked up, Cuban played down the extent of his promotion and said he personally held only $494 worth of DOGE.
A phishing loss and a near-total Bitcoin exit
In September 2023, Cuban lost about $870,000 in a phishing attack tied to one of his crypto wallets. He said the theft happened after he downloaded a tampered MetaMask installer. Reports at the time said he contacted Coinbase quickly enough to stop hackers from taking another $2.5 million.
This May, Cuban turned openly bearish again. He said, 「Bitcoin has lost its way,」 adding that it should have outperformed gold during the same period.
When Bitcoin supporters pushed back, Cuban said he had already sold into strength: 「My lowest sale was $88,000, and I started trimming as early as the $120,000 range.」 In an interview this month at the RAISE Summit in Paris, he added that he had sold 98% of what had once been a Bitcoin position worth hundreds of millions of dollars and now held only a small amount of Dogecoin.
The report says Bitcoin was trading near $63,000 over the weekend, well below the $88,000 floor Cuban cited for his sales. Protos uses that gap, together with the earlier banana comment, project blowups, platform failures and wallet losses, to argue that the cleanest crypto trade in Cuban’s record may have been getting out when he did.