Mark Cuban on his cryptocurrency portfolio: ‘I own a lot of Ethereum because I think it’s the closest to a true currency’

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Billionaire investor Mark Cuban is bullish on the future of cryptocurrency and frequently compares blockchain technology to the early days of the internet.

That’s why, over the years, Cuban held onto the few digital coins he bought in the “early days,” Cuban said on a recent episode of “The Delphi Podcast.” Currently, his portfolio allocation is broken down as: “60% bitcoin, 30% Ethereum and 10% the rest.”

Bitcoin, created in 2009, is the largest cryptocurrency by market value, but is appealing to Cuban as a store of value rather than a currency.

In 2012, “people said bitcoin is a currency, and I’m like, ‘It’s just not going to work.’ But, the entire time, I said it was a store of value where, if you could get people to believe that it was a better alternative than gold, because of its algorithmic scarcity, the price is going to go up,” he said.

According to Cuban, bitcoin is “a better alternative to gold, and it’s going to continue [to be],” he said. “That’s why I own bitcoin and why I never sold it.”

Cuban is also very interested in Ethereum — the blockchain where ether, the second largest cryptocurrency below bitcoin, is built — mainly due to the smart contracts that run on it. In cryptocurrency, smart contracts are collections of code that carry out a set of instructions and run on the blockchain.

“What really changed everything was smart contracts,” Cuban said. “Smart contracts came along, and that created DeFi [or decentralized finance] and NFTs [or nonfungible tokens]. That’s what changed the game. That’s what got me excited. That’s why it’s a lot like the internet.”

He sees Ethereum as “adaptable over time” because developers can iterate and improve its capabilities, he said.

“That is more life-like, and so, I have a lot of Ethereum as well,” Cuban said. “I wish I had bought it sooner, but I started buying it four years ago, simply because I think it’s the closest we have to a true currency.”

Cuban hasn’t specifically named the rest of the cryptocurrencies he owns that represent the remaining 10%, but “there’s none that I’m just all in on, other than bitcoin and Ethereum, that I look at as being an equivalent investment,” he said.

In February, Cuban bought a small amount of dogecoin, a cryptocurrency that started as a joke, for his 11-year-old son, Jake. Cuban said at the time that the purchase was meant to be “fun and educational” for his son, while also helping Cuban learn more about the space.

“There’s some I [buy] for fun, some I do for experience, because I just want to learn,” Cuban added.

Disclosure: CNBC owns the exclusive off-network cable rights to “Shark Tank.”

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Ethereum Back Above $2,000 as Market Rally Continues

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Ethereum has hit $2,000 for the second time in its history.

Ethereum’s Price Rally

After a week of green candles for Ethereum, the second-ranked cryptocurrency is trading back above $2,000.

ETH first crossed $2,000 on Feb. 20 after weeks of upward movement. The high didn’t last long, though: it was trading just above $1,300 by the end of the month.

Demand for the asset has increased in recent weeks as the crypto bull run picks up steam. It’s up 26% in the last week, while Bitcoin has also seen a sharp rise.

Bitcoin and Ethereum often follow each other in price performance. But this week, Ethereum has outperformed Bitcoin. The ratio between the two assets is currently 0.033.

Other than the market’s excitable state, one likely reason for the rise is the imminent implementation of EIP-1559.

The proposal will bring in a fundamental change to Ethereum’s monetary policy, introducing a gas fee burn on every transaction. It means that ETH will become deflationary if the network sees enough activity, which has led some Ethereum fans to refer to the currency as “ultra sound money.” EIP-1559 is going live in the blockchain’s London hardfork, scheduled for this July.

Visa announcing on Monday that it would settle USDC transactions on Ethereum has also helped propel ETH across $2,000. The payments firm wrote:

“One small step forward for Visa’s settlement platform, one giant step forward for the integration of digital and traditional fiat currencies.”

Ethereum’s market cap is now roughly $230.8 billion, according to CoinGecko. That’s about 11.75% of the whole cryptocurrency market.

Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this feature owned ETH and several other cryptocurrencies.

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Bitcoin Toys With $60k, BNB Hits All-Time High and Ethereum Creeps Past $2,000

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It’s all systems go for the crypto market.

Binance Coin hit a new all-time high of $356 at 2 AM, and little more than an hour later, Bitcoin also hit highs of $60,200. By then, Ethereum also crossed $2,000, a hair’s breadth from its ATH $2,036 on February 20.

Bitcoin trades at $59,950 at the time of writing, while Ethereum goes for $2,011.

The coins are hot in demand. The average transaction fee Ethereum—an indication of activity on the Ethereum blockchain—increased from $13 on Monday to $22 today.

Institutional and retail interest is high

And after a few weeks of relative quiet, institutional interest in Bitcoin is picking back up . Yesterday, banking giant JP Morgan said that Bitcoin’s volatility is declining, making it more attractive as a store of value and as an investment to institutions.

In a note on Thursday, the bank explained that if Bitcoin’s volatility was set to converge with the volatility of gold, the data supports a price projection of $130,000. JP Morgan’s projection doesn’t come entirely out of the blue. Earlier this year JP Morgan quantitative strategist Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou said that $146,000 “should be considered as a long-term target.”

Plus, according to documents that Morgan Stanley filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday morning, Morgan Stanley is falling deeper down the crypto rabbit hole. It plans to increase clients’ exposure to Bitcoin by enabling certain mutual funds to invest in cash-settled Bitcoin futures contracts and the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, a publicly-traded closed-end fund devoted to Bitcoin.

Like JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley’s interest in Bitcoin is not sudden. At the beginning of this year it bought a 10% share in MicroStrategy, a cloud computing company that’s hoarded $4.5 billion in Bitcoin over the last year.

Doge is down. Paris is up.

Not everything went smoothly. Dogecoin took a big hit to its price today. It is down almost 8% to trade at a price of $0.059. The price briefly pumped over April Fool’s day when Elon Musk tweeted that “SpaceX is going to put a literal dogecoin on the literal moon.”

SpaceX is going to put a literal Dogecoin on the literal moon — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 1, 2021

Shortly after Musk’s tweet the price jumped from $0.053 to $0.07, surging by almost 32%, but it has since beat a retreat. Clearly the “Elon Musk Effect” is losing its bark.

Lastly, Paris Hilton rejoined the crypto world with a big announcement. In summer last year, the hotel heiress and socialite sold her artwork as a non-fungible token for $17,000. Now she’s back at it again.

Known as the original influencer, @ParisHilton is also one of the original NFT innovators and has been involved since March 2020. “The possibilities are endless with this.” She discusses her upcoming NFT, bitcoin and other investment projects. https://t.co/QENIFOHcZd pic.twitter.com/LUiyRqRiaj — CNBC (@CNBC) April 1, 2021

Hilton appeared on CNBC’s “Closing Bell” to talk about her upcoming NFT business, the details of which she remained tight-lipped about, but hinted that one of the NFTs will be art and the other will be “music and memorabilia.” She also opened up about her portfolio as an investor and said she owns Bitcoin and is backing several female entrepreneurs.

Never a dull day in crypto, eh?