Mark Cuban owns 30% ETH because it’s 'as close as we have to a true currency'

Billionaire Mark Cuban believes Ethereum is the closest thing we have to being a true currency and views Bitcoin as a better alternative to gold.

The Shark Tank and Dallas Mavericks co-owner made the comments as a guest on a recent episode of the Delphi Podcast, where he noted that the growth of DeFi and NFTs had made him excited about crypto. He explained that “smart contracts and the fact that they're decentralized" means "there's no one in charge right there, the governance is completely different. That's what changed the game.”

In fact he compared the development of Ethereum's smart contracts to the internet boom in the late ’90s and early 2000s:

“When the Internet started to happen, you started seeing all these applications that could disrupt things that happened in the analog world, like when we looked at streaming because I wanted to listen to Indiana University basketball, I couldn't do it on the radio in Dallas.”

Despite Cuban’s bullishness on Ethereum, he revealed his portfolio has double the amount of Bitcoin to Ethereum with “60 percent Bitcoin, 30 percent Ethereum and 10 percent the rest.”

The Mavs owner doesn’t draw comparisons with Bitcoin to the internet boom, as he views it primarily as a store of value. He believes Bitcoin is a better investment alternative to gold:

“With Bitcoin, you could do transfers. And that was great. Right. And it was a store value and that was awesome. It's a better alternative to gold, which is phenomenal. It's taking money away from gold and it's going to continue. And that's why I own Bitcoin, but that's one thing, that's not really where it compares to the Internet.”

The billionaire who stated  I’d rather have bananas” than Bitcoin in September 2019, has completely changed his tune since then. However, he may have been more involved than those comments suggest, after he tweeted in early January this year that: “I still have crypto from the early days of Coinbase. I’ve never sold anything.”

I don’t think people realize I try to test and use all this stuff and have for years. I still have crypto from the early days of coinbase. I’ve never sold anything

— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) January 12, 2021

While Cuban didn’t disclose what “the rest” of his portfolio was, a portion might be Doge after the Shark Tank investor forecast a scenario where Doge hits $1.