Mark Cuban: ‘Crypto is going through the lull that the internet went through’
Mark Cuban, a billionaire entrepreneur, believes that bitcoin is on the same downward trajectory as software and internet companies in the early 2000s.
On Monday, Bitcoin fell to a 10-month low as U.S. markets fell further. Between January and March 2022, sales of non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, plunged.
On Monday, Cuban addressed the slump in a trending Twitter thread TWTR, -3.69 percent. “Crypto is experiencing the same lull as the internet.”
Cuban and others, like entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk, have already drawn parallels between bitcoin and the early days of the internet. After several internet-centric companies attracted significant levels of investment speculation, the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, only to eventually bottom out.
Cuban sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo for $5.7 billion in 1999, right before the dot-com bubble burst. Broadcast.com is no longer available.
The billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks is highly involved in the crypto and NFT space. According to a CNBC story, he claims to possess several thousand dollars worth of bitcoin BTCUSD, 1.45 percent, ethereum ETH USD, 4.55 percent, and dogecoin DOGE USD, 5.97 percent, and that 80 percent of his non-Shark Tank assets are crypto-related.
But what happens next? While NFTs have become increasingly popular in recent years, with developers such as Beeple and NBA Top Shot selling them for millions of dollars, recent NFT sales have dropped as more makers crowded the market. According to crypto data tracking platform Dune Analytics, the average daily transaction volume on OpenSea, the largest NFT marketplace, decreased by more than 55 percent from January to March 2022.
Last January, Cuban said something similar in a now-deleted tweet. “It’s EXACTLY like the internet stock bubble watching the cryptos trade.” He wrote, “EXACTLY.” “I believe BTC, ETH, and a few others will be equivalent to companies like AMZN, EBay, and Priceline, which were founded during the dotcom period, survived the bubble, and prospered.” Many will not.”
On Monday, Cuban made his newest crypto comments when the values of numerous cryptocurrencies were falling. Bitcoin prices were holding around half of their November high of $32,000. Ethereum prices have dropped 24 percent in the last three months and 39.2 percent in the last year.