He once said he would rather take bananas than BTC, but later put 60% of his position in BTC, and now he has sold out in disappointment because of a war.

Written by: ChandlerZ, Foresight News

On May 21, billionaire entrepreneur and former owner of the NBA Dallas Mavericks Mark Cuban stated on the Front Office Sports podcast that he has sold most of his Bitcoin holdings because he believes Bitcoin has failed to effectively hedge against the risks brought by a weakening dollar and geopolitical turmoil, especially during the recent conflict in Iran. "When the Iranian war sparked this chaos, Bitcoin was seen as the best alternative to fiat currency devaluation; I always thought it was better than gold. However, gold prices soared, while Bitcoin fell. And every time the dollar depreciates, Bitcoin should rise, but it hasn't done that."

"I think Bitcoin has lost the plot."

2019: I’d Rather Have Bananas Than Bitcoin

Mark Cuban's public attitude towards crypto started with skepticism. In September 2019, during a video Q&A with Wired magazine, he stated, "I would rather have bananas than Bitcoin because at least I can eat bananas," which was later frequently quoted. At that time, he compared Bitcoin to baseball cards, comic books, and artwork, believing it had no intrinsic value and emphasizing that crypto is too complex for 99% of people.

In fact, he had entered the market even earlier. In October 2017, during an interview with Bloomberg, Mark Cuban admitted that he had purchased Bitcoin and considered it a "fun" addition to his portfolio, but he emphasized that his position was very small, treating it as a speculative gamble similar to collecting baseball cards or artwork.

2021: From Banana Guy to 60% Position in Bitcoin

The shift took place during the bull market in 2021, when Mark Cuban transformed from an observer into one of the most active crypto advocates.

At the end of January, he minted a personal series titled The RollUp 2021 on the NFT platform Rarible, issuing a 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 purchases, with Mark Cuban explaining, "Because we can do it, and it will bring a lot of PR." In the first month, the Mavericks sold about $122,000 worth of merchandise through DOGE, and two months later, DOGE skyrocketed to an all-time high of $0.7375.

That same year, he revealed his crypto allocation on The Delphi Podcast, stating, "About 60% Bitcoin, 30% Ethereum, 10% other." He emphasized, "I have never sold Bitcoin." The reason he provided at the time was that Bitcoin's supply is fixed and decentralized, making it a superior store of value compared to gold.

June 2021: Educated by Iron Finance

At the top of the bull market, Mark Cuban was schooled by DeFi.

In June 2021, he published a lengthy article on his personal blog titled "The Brilliance of Yield Farming, Liquidity Providing and Valuing Crypto Projects," openly praising the algorithmic stablecoin project Iron Finance on the Polygon chain and claiming to be a major liquidity provider for the DAI/TITAN trading pair, with an initial investment of $75,000. Days later, TITAN plummeted from nearly $60 to close to zero within 24 hours, resulting in an overall evaporation of about $2 billion in the protocol.

IRON Finance's analysis report stated that the incident was triggered by certain large whale addresses starting to sell, causing panic among users, which led to mass redemptions of IRON and sales of TITAN. Due to the operation of the 10-minute TWAP oracle, the spot price of TITAN further declined compared to the TWAP redemption price, creating a vicious cycle where the more users redeemed IRON, the more TITAN was created, causing its price to continuously drop until TITAN collapsed nearly to zero, and IRON Finance also suspended contract redemptions for USDC.

After the incident, Mark Cuban did not publicly disclose the exact amount of his losses, only stating in an email to Bloomberg that "the investment wasn't large enough to require verification of every detail," and claimed it represented a small proportion of his crypto holdings. He also remarked, "I got hit just like everyone else. Ironically, I had already pulled out some, thinking their locked positions were still rising, then bam... Ultimately, it was my own laziness. This DeFi play is fundamentally about income and math; I didn't calculate the key metrics correctly."

2022 to 2025: Entangled with Regulation, Sued, and Won

After the bull-bear switch, Mark Cuban's crypto journey transformed from buying coins to fighting legal battles and confronting regulators.

After crypto brokerage Voyager Digital went bankrupt in 2022, retail investors sued Mark Cuban and the Mavericks, accusing them of selling a "Ponzi scheme" to inexperienced young people through the team's partnership. Mark Cuban repeatedly criticized former SEC Chairman Gary Gensler in public, stating that instead of pressuring platforms to come talk, why not first provide clear rules.

On December 30, 2025, the class-action lawsuit accusing Mark Cuban and the Dallas Mavericks of defrauding investors through the promotion of Voyager Digital was dismissed. The lawsuit claimed that Cuban had made false statements about the company multiple times before Voyager filed for bankruptcy protection in 2022. In a statement, Cuban and his legal team at Brown Rudnick stated, "The lawsuit raised claims under various state securities laws and consumer fraud regulations. On December 30, U.S. District Judge Roy K. Altman of the Southern District of Florida fully dismissed the case."

In 2025, the billionaire even considered launching his own Memecoin but ultimately did not proceed. In his most recent comments on cryptocurrency, he expressed disappointment stemming from NFTs and Ethereum, although this level of disappointment was not as strong as his disdain for the current state of Bitcoin.

One Person, Seven Years, Three Reversals

Since the onset of the U.S.-Iran conflict in February 2026, Bitcoin has cumulatively risen about 16%, while gold has fallen about 15%, and Ethereum has risen about 9%. Mark Cuban sees snapshots of the days when the war escalated; when the time window is extended, Bitcoin has actually outperformed gold. This does not negate his disappointment, but simply indicates that his judgment this time is still a highly time-window-dependent emotional decision.

The arc that Mark Cuban has traversed over these seven years is almost the standard template for the past round of retail investors moving from skepticism to fervor and then to disappointment. The next time he changes his mind, it will likely still be triggered simultaneously by macro narratives and price trends.