Mark Cuban Doubles Down on Bitcoin While Dissing Gold

Billionaire tech entrepreneur Mark Cuban is still bullish on Bitcoin, saying that he wants the price to continue dropping.

“I want Bitcoin to go down a lot further so I can buy some more,” Cuban said in an appearance on comedian Bill Maher’s “Club Random” podcast.

The owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks said that investing in gold wasn’t worth it, adding that he much preferred digital assets. Cuban, who is worth $6.25 billion, has long praised cryptocurrencies—particularly Bitcoin, Ethereum and Dogecoin.

“Gold is a store of value and so is Bitcoin,” he said, after Maher suggested the comparison. “If everything went to hell in a hand basket and you had a gold bar you know what would happen? Someone would beat the fuck out of you or kill you and take your gold bar. It’s useless.” 

The investor added that owning gold today is just owning a digital transaction, anyway, so he much preferred to invest in Bitcoin. 

Bitcoin right now is trading for $16,844, according to CoinGecko—over 75% lower than the all-time high of $69,044 it hit last year. Gold—and silver—have fared much better as investments in 2022. Despite the crypto market and U.S. equities taking a beating, the metals have more or less held their value. Gold is now trading for $1,800 per ounce; this time last year it was $1,807. 

Maher argued that Bitcoin was not worth buying because it isn’t backed by anything. But Cuban hit back, saying that holding shares in “90% of companies out there” was also pointless. 

In the two-hour, wide-ranging conversation, the two agreed on at least one thing: that San Francisco is no longer a great place to start a tech company—with Cuban describing the Californian city as “pretentious.”

“An entire industry is getting pushed out,” Cuban said. “The whole technology industry went from well, okay, this is growth, this is, you know, the new thing, and now, it’s just about people shitting on the street.”

Cuban was once a crypto critic but now his NBA team accepts cryptocurrency for tickets and merchandise. In 2021, it became the first basketball team to accept Dogecoin. 

Since then, Cuban has said—along with billionaire Elon Musk—that Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency originally created as a joke, could be useful for making payments.