Bear market will last until crypto apps are actually useful: Mark Cuban

Published at: June 29, 2022

Mark Cuban, the billionaire entrepreneur known for his role as one of the main investors on the reality television show Shark Tank, said the crypto bear market won’t be over until there’s a better focus on applications with utility.

He also doesn’t think the market has hit “cheap” prices yet.

Cuban has stated in the past around 80% of his non-Shark Tank portfolio was in crypto. Appearing on a June 23 episode of the Bankless Podcast, he was asked how long he believes the current crypto bear market will last:

“It lasts until there’s a catalyst and that catalyst is going to be an application, or we get so low people go ‘fuck it I'll buy some.’”

He believes a better focus on applications with utility will pull crypto from its slump and with so many apps focused on financial technology or collectibles, the launch of a business focused application would be one of such events that could spark a reversal for markets.

Using the example of a “decentralized version of Quickbooks,” a small business accounting management software, Cuban predicted a rush of users if something like that launched.

Despite analysts predicting that Bitcoin (BTC) as well as many other cryptocurrencies have hit a price bottom, Cuban says “it’s not cheap yet” when analyzing the high market capitalization of some projects:

“You look at the market caps, and you see it’s a billion dollar plus market cap or $6 billion or $8 billion or $40 billion you don’t look at that and go ‘that's cheap.’ If you remember back to DeFi Summer, these things were selling for less than a penny and their market caps were in the hundreds of millions.”

He adds even with lower market cap cryptos “there’s no utility,” and gives an example of the decentralized exchange (DEX) SushiSwap (SUSHI) token as a “relatively cheap” buy with its $215 million market cap, but added:

“You get paid it if you’re a liquidity provider, but then who’s going to buy it from you? What’s the reason to buy it from you?”

Cuban believes mergers between different protocols and blockchains will eventually see the crypto industry consolidate, as “that’s what happens in every industry.”

“I’d rather get with somebody who says ‘let’s do a roll-up,’” with Cuban saying that he’d support a merge of various blockchains, close others and then move applications and communities over to just one and offer a token exchange or bridge from the closing blockchains to port users over:

“Now all of a sudden your user base is 10x, you still have a problem of better applications, you still have to have some reason people want to use that blockchain but at least you may be able to have a better community to come up with ideas because otherwise you’re gone.”

With the crypto space having various sub sectors such as layer 1s, layer 2s, nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and decentralized finance (DeFi) tokens, Cuban was asked which he was most optimistic on.

Cuban said he was particularly interested in carbon offset DeFi tokens, which he burns to offset his own personal carbon footprint. He added that while not everyone cares about offsetting their carbon emissions, it was the “easiest way” in comparison to buying carbon offsets from a broker, which he claims is “a pain in the ass.”

Ultimately though, Cuban said “all of them have potential, that's why they got all this money, all of them have a reason why they think they’re better and will succeed.”