‘I’d Rather Have Bananas’: Tech Billionaire Mark Cuban on Bitcoin

Billionaire technology investor Mark Cuban said that he would be happier owning bananas than Bitcoin (BTC).

Cuban made his remarks in a video Q&A published on YouTube by technology news outlet Wired on Sept. 27.

During the Q&A session, he answered to a Twitter user asking why Cuban hates crypto if he is “into providing opportunity for people to grow their net worth.” 

First, Cuban seemingly suggested that the issue he has with Bitcoin is that its price is determined by the market's demand for it:

“Here’s the thing about crypto, particularly Bitcoin: Bitcoin is worth what somebody will pay for it.”

BTC has no intrinsic value

Cuban then argued that Bitcoin has no intrinsic value. To better explain his thoughts on the matter, he compared the crypto asset to artwork, comic books and baseball cards:

“Did you ever see someone who collected baseball cards? And they were really, really, really proud of their baseball cards because they kept saying they were going to go up in price? Comic books — same thing, even artwork. There’s no real intrinsic value, you can’t eat a baseball card [...] Your artwork might look good on the wall but not much you can do with it. Bitcoin — there’s even less you can do with it: at least I can look at my baseball card [...] I can look at artwork.”

Bitcoin is like gold, it’s like a religion

Cuban then raised the concern that Bitcoin is too complicated for the average person, given the great number of options for its storage and theft prevention needs. This is where he notes that Bitcoin, often called digital gold, is actually really like gold:

“I say it’s like gold. Gold is a religion: people who are really into gold — they’ll tell you that there’s a bad depression and things go to hell in a handbasket, if you own gold then you’ll be okay. No, you won’t! You carry around a gold bar — someone’s gonna hit your ass, knock you out and steal your gold bar and it’s gonna happen again and again and again. I’d rather have bananas, I can eat bananas. Crypto… Not so much.”

This idea is in line with what Cuban said in August when he noted that Bitcoin is fundamentally similar to gold and defined them both as collectibles.

Cuban did admit that he is not “against cryptocurrencies” — however, he warned investors to be very careful as, at best, they’re stored value.

As Cointelegraph reported in July, Cuban defined Facebook’s Libra stablecoin as a big mistake. He noted that “globally and in countries where there isn’t a lot of rules of law, or a lot of government stability, or currency stability, then it could be dangerous.”