[Take-Away Tuesday] Mark Cuban: Present & Future Opportunity of Crypto

Take-away from The Shark's 🦈 interview with UpOnly, April 1, 2021

❓ [Why] deep-dive on Crypto

I got familiar with it [crypto] in 2012 but was never sold on Bitcoin being a currency. Fast forward, when Ethereum and smart contracts start to happen, I started paying attention. Then, De-Fi summer hit (dig in some), and then NFTs (picked up some). Then I started minting NFTs so I can learn. That led me to the royalty standard ➡️ a game changer ➡️ learn more ➡️ solidity and smart contract. From there it's just about the business application and the opportunities, and that's why I really dove in 🤿. Been on it for a while but hardcore 🤘🏼 only for the last 3 - 4 months.

❓ Comment made on Bitcoin in 2013 re: Doubt on Bitcoin as a currency

I never saw (Bitcoin) as a currency. I saw it as a store of value, digital gold. Just a supply and demand issue. It was just a question of when it started becoming more commonplace for people to buy it ➡️ significant increase in price. Lost money when ICO ballooned and learned 📖 some there. But it really wasn't until summer when smart contracts started to evolve and become more available.

Bitcoin is great as a platform. It is accepted now... it is going to replace gold in the portfolios in a lot of people. Hopefully, that will push the price 🆙 as long as the whales 🐳 will continue to huddle.

❓ Realistic timeline for gold to be replaced by Bitcoin

It will be gradual. You are starting to see these ETFs pop up and ways for people to buy it. It is too difficult still to get money into a wallet 👛 just to buy Bitcoin. Until that's simple, people will buy it thru traditional means [like] brokers, Robinhood, Coinbase (to a lesser extent). As there are more opportunity to buy from where the people have their savings or retirements with, that's when you see a chip ⛏️ away at gold. Younger generation are going to trust Bitcoin.

❓ How far can NFTs go

The whole collective thing is just proof of concept for smart contracts. The real money comes from business applications. Example: a [company] has an insurance application that always checks out an oracle for the national weather service for temperature and precipitation. For the Mavericks, we had a weather where it was <0 and a few inches in snow ❄️, and everything closed. I could have bought an insurance on a smart contract that said, if a temp in Dallas goes <0 and we get >2in of precipitation then how much does it cost that you pay me this amount. That's completely different from traditional insurance because it is all driven by a smart contract. It just naturally checks every 30mins the national weather service and if it clicks, it just pay right to my wallet. That's the type of application you are going to see more of...[Health Insurance] bunch of validators on an anonymous basis, looked at the claim and authorise or didn't authorise and if you got 80% of the people authorising it then your claim is approved...

The biggest and coolest stuff is gonna happen in business 👔and entertainment 🎶 rather than arts and collectibles.

❓ Missing infrastructure in crypto now

(1) There is not an efficient connectivity on exchanges. You get a lot of variability. You get liquidity in one place, liquidity is gone, you bounce to another. People try to game the system in a lot of respects and you get rug pulled 🥺. That shouldn't happen if all the DEXs were connected together. (2) Simplifying user interface. Wallets are not easy. And the fact that you need a wallet doesn't make it easy.

We have to build up on simplicity and trust issues in order for this (crypto) to become mainstream.

❓ Gas ⛽ fees pricing retail out

It is not an infrastructure issue. That's more POW vs POS, or any other of the options. It's like the early days of the internet where bandwidth was the biggest impediment 🚧. It was crazy but we knew that at some point bandwidth would open up. Transactions per sec (tps) = bandwidth.

❓ Rationally think long term when everything is frothy 🎈

Remember why you're doing what you're doing. [Bitcoin] The uncertainty of Bitcoin comes down to what the whales 🐳 do because there's so much Bitcoin concentrated in so few wallets at the top - that's a risk factor 😞. And we don't know how much of that is lost and held. But what you need to know is what is the utility. And Bitcoin now has become a platform more than anything else. Ethereum is a better platform but Bitcoin is an SOV platform.

❓ Regulation

The biggest challenge for regulators on [DeFi] is going to be fraud...There's going to be some people who lose money as more newbies come in thinking they're going to get that 30% APY all day everyday. And they don't understand liquidity providers and you see situation where tokens bring in liquidity and it lasts a week or 2 weeks because they buy that liquidity. I think they [regulators] will deal with securitisation and fraud first...Regulation can add trust to it.

❓ Banking System feeling the heat from FinTech or Crypto

I think FinTech will feel the heat first and then banking 🏦. FinTech is taking out chunks from the banking system because they're too slow to do what is obvious. Crypto will do the same thing with FinTech. At its base, DeFi allows anybody to be their own personal banker particularly with over-collateralisation. You are allowed to do almost anything in seconds and you just make your choices and live with the results. If that's get built up and simplified, just like FinTech simplified banking applications; FinTech is going to be the first to get the hit.

❓ "ETH killers" 🔪

I think Eth will figure it out for sure but there's specific value propositions for each of those blockchains (DOT, SOL, etc)...There's going to be a lot of losers. I think Ethereum is good because there are so many developers, and they know what the problem is. The only issue is trying to overcome from POW to POS and what comes with that.

❓ Advice on young people with conviction [on a monetary perspective] 💎🤲

You have to be exceedingly handsome like I am. 😂😂😂 First, you got to figure out what's your definition of success. No matter what age you are, find something you are good at...bust your ass harder 💪 than anybody to be great at it. It becomes easier to monetise, you get fired up and you make things happen. The thing about crypto right now is that it is changing 100miles/hr every second, every day...That's an opportunity for everybody. If you outwork anybody in the industry, you're going to have a place. 🙌

/END.TBP