Mark Cuban is not the type to walk back a position quietly. So when he sold most of his Bitcoin in May 2026 and called it "disappointing," it landed differently than the usual crypto pessimis
Mark Cuban is not the type to walk back a position quietly. So when he sold most of his Bitcoin in May 2026 and called it "disappointing," it landed differently than the usual crypto pessimism.
This was someone who had genuinely believed, and said so repeatedly, on the record, with money behind it.
"People look at Bitcoin as a better version of gold, and I agree with that," he said in an interview last year. "It's easier to buy and sell. You can fractionalize it, you can buy things, you can transfer it internationally. And so I think it has more value than gold."
His reasoning was practical. Gold in bar form is heavy, prone to theft, and difficult to exchange for goods and services. Bitcoin, in his view, solved all three problems simultaneously.
At the time his crypto portfolio was structured to reflect that conviction, 60% Bitcoin, 30% Ethereum, 10% other assets.
Eighteen months later, Cuban sold most of his Bitcoin. The reason was not a change in philosophy. It was a data point he could not argue with.
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When U.S.-Iran military tensions escalated in early 2026, Cuban expected Bitcoin to behave exactly as he had always described, rising when the world panics and the dollar weakens.
Gold had already hit an all-time high of $5,589 per ounce on January 28, weeks before the conflict began, driven by Iran war fears, a Fed rate hold, and a weak dollar.
Bitcoin, by contrast, dropped in the immediate aftermath of the strikes. "Gold just took off and Bitcoin went down," Cuban said during a podcast. That single data point broke his thesis.
"When all this shit hit the fan with the Iran war, gold just blew up, Bitcoin dropped," Cuban said during a podcast in May 2026. "And every time the dollar dropped, Bitcoin should've gone up, and it just didn't do that."
The asset he had called a better version of gold had failed the precise test he had designed for it.
Cuban now describes Bitcoin as "disappointing" and says it has "lost the plot." He retains a more positive view of Ethereum, citing smart contracts, DeFi, and real-world applications as reasons the second-largest crypto still has a future.
His strongest verdict was reserved for everything else. Memecoins, tokens, altcoins, "garbage," he said.
Bitcoin is trading at approximately $63,495 today, August 12, 2026, down 49 percent from its all-time high of $126,000. Gold is trading at approximately $4,424 per ounce.
Cuban called Bitcoin a better version of gold in January 2025. Gold has since outperformed Bitcoin by almost over 100 percentage points.
He saw it coming before most people did, just from the wrong side of the trade.
