Billionaire Mark Cuban says that he has sold most of his bitcoin, and he doesn’t mince words as to why.
In a recent interview with Front Office Sports, the billionaire investor and partial owner of the Dallas Mavericks said the crypto asset has “lost the plot” and singled out bitcoin’s failure to keep pace with gold during bouts of geopolitical stress over the past year, periods when many investors expected the asset to prove its worth as a reliable hedge against economic turmoil.
During the clip, which did not make the final cut of the interview but was posted on X by host Daniel Roberts as additional content, Cuban voiced broader frustration with crypto in general. “I don’t know if it’s dead, but it’s disappointing,” said Cuban. “Crypto is disappointing because it hasn’t come up with an application for grandma.”
Mark Cuban on crypto: "Bitcoin has lost the plot. I always thought it was a better version of gold than gold. Well, gold just blew up, Bitcoin dropped. Not the hedge I expected it to be."
says he sold most of his BTC. as for memecoins? "garbage."https://t.co/EgH1rd5GGJ pic.twitter.com/oYRMye3DEg
— Daniel Roberts (@readDanwrite) May 21, 2026
‘Not the hedge I expected it to be’
When discussing bitcoin specifically, Cuban laid out his reasoning in detail: “I think bitcoin has lost the plot. When I started buying bitcoin, and I’ve sold… most of it, it was because when all the shit hit the fan with the Iran war, you know, bitcoin was always the best alternative to fiat currency losing its value, and I always thought it was a better version of gold than gold. Well, gold just blew up and went to $5,000, bitcoin dropped. And every time the dollar dropped, bitcoin should have gone up… and it just didn’t do that. [It’s] not the hedge I expected it to be, and that was just really disappointing.”
Despite saying he “always thought [bitcoin] was a better version of gold than gold”, Cuban has a long history of disparaging bitcoin as an asset. In 2019, when bitcoin traded under $10,000, Cuban told CNBC that he would “rather have bananas than bitcoin” because the former offered more practical use. In 2014, Cuban told USA Today that bitcoin “has no shot” as a long-term digital currency, and a deleted tweet from 2013 indicates his negative opinion of bitcoin relative to the value of gold isn’t new.
Cuban added that he was less disappointed in Ethereum, though he called the memecoins that dominated crypto headlines a year or two ago “garbage.”
Bitcoin’s promise of ‘digital gold’ loses its luster
Cuban is far from the only voice that has been highlighting bitcoin’s underperformance against gold during the past year’s geopolitical flare-ups, and during heightened U.S.-Europe tensions over Greenland, bitcoin fell roughly 10% in a single week while gold climbed about 5%.
However, bitcoin has held up much better during the Iran War, and it’s possible that doubts about bitcoin’s “digital gold” narrative are overblown.
That said, with bitcoin currently selling under $80,000, the cryptocurrency is still a long way off its all-time high of $126,198.07, which it hit last October, according to Yahoo Finance’s historical price data.
