Generally speaking, Bitcoin and the idea of cryptocurrency have received mixed responses since their inception. One notable response, however, is from billionaire Mark Cuban who views cryptocurrency as being more of a “store of value” rather than a currency in and of itself. It is worth pointing out that Cuban himself does not claim to know the future of either cryptocurrency or blockchain, however, he remains adamant that the latter needs to be supported due to its increased effectiveness and practicality.
Cuban mentioned the ongoing loss of minted money, saying that governments experience a greater cost when it comes to earning large amounts of money at any given time. Furthermore, the use of fiat money would not work in the long term due to its insupportable nature as a result of not being backed by any commodity such as gold. As aforementioned, Cuban does not claim to know whether everything will collapse, however, he does believe that governments are going to gradually make the jump to digital currencies, and therefore potentially place their earnings in either Bitcoin or Ethereum.
All this does lead to an issue of trust, though. Those in favour of cryptocurrency would prefer algorithmic scarcity, and there would be this underlying notion that no one party or individual would be able to hijack any network via blockchain either. Although Mark Cuban does not completely rule out the possibility of a hostile digital takeover, he does call for the need to exercise caution regardless.
This leads us to the idea of ‘smart contracts’ and the preference of Ethereum over Bitcoin. Simply put, smart contracts refer to bits of code which perform any and all given sets of instructions deemed suitable for execution. Cuban cites the arrival of these contracts as the precursor to the arrival of cryptocurrency and the eventual first warning to the pre-existing banking systems. Moreover, just as the Internet itself has transformed into a universal and ever-present digital entity, blockchain’s rise to prominence can be viewed as being similar if not the exact same. It is because of this that Cuban truly believes that Ethereum possesses a distinct advantage when compared to Bitcoin for the everyday consumer.
Ultimately, Cuban’s stance on the issue should come as no surprise due to his preference for decentralized finance and how it often goes hand in hand with blockchains, specifically Ethereum.