https://thedefiant.substack.com/p/mark-cuban-eth-has-an-advantage-over-12fMark Cuban: "ETH Has an Advantage Over BTC as a Store of Value"But what he’s really excited about is smart contracts, which are allowing developers to make any decentralized application they can dream of, sparking innovation and compounding network effects, and most importantly, laying the foundation for what he calls “friction-free banking.”
Because most of this innovation is happening on Ethereum, he believes ETH is becoming a better store of value than BTC.''I was all in on blockchain, but the argument on Bitcoin in particular was always it was going to be a currency. And over the next five years, I was certainly a naysayer. And to this day, I'm not a believer that Bitcoin will become a currency.
So what really changed was one, watching people change their mind about it being a currency, and start recognizing that it's only a store of value; and two, starting to see the maturation of blockchain apps, particularly on Ethereum; and then three, this past summer, watching on DeFi go nuts.
So for me DeFi, I really was okay now, blockchain in particular, is really starting to mature. You're starting to see applications that are really coming into play. You're starting to see NFT. And it's not so much just about how much is sold and market value, but more just that people are becoming more comfortable with it. And so we're starting to see these applications that are just popping up left and right.
And it reminded me so much of the early days of the internet, where the mid-90s people started talking about internet applications, but the internet had been around for 10 years, right? But it was mostly in universities. And so it was very analogous to what's going on with blockchain. You had early adopter applications.
You had banks and private organizations trying to use blockchain. You had people trying to come up with new ways to use it.
And then bam, smart contracts came along, and it just blew up. And Bitcoin no longer was all about, well, it's going to be a currency and people would argue about the block size and all that shit, right? It was more now, okay, what can smart contracts do?And now that people have come up with these ideas, and people are starting to put money into it, you're really starting to see it. So that's what's got me really excited lately.''
"Reserve currencies tend to stick around as long as they're reserve currencies and there are always multiple currencies. If one falters, another one stays there....there's always a currency there to take it's place.''The pound has been around for hundreds of years, it used to be a reserve currency, but hasn't collapsed yet''''The reality is that most fiat money is digital right now. And there will be a point when sovereign governments use their own digital coins because it's going to be cheaper.''
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Now you can start selling digital assets...when I realised there was a thing saying 'retail percentage' that when I put up something for sale and it got resold, I got a percentage, and it could track it every time it's sold, for evermore, and I would get continued to be paid, that was the gamechanger.
That changes how music, how video, how the internet is going to work, forever.''If you're a professional photographer, you put your photos on mintable or rarible, and every time it get sold, you get paid. And same with music videos, put it where you can tokenise it, and keep on getting paid. That is enormous, that is such a gamechanger, that traditional industries which sell digital goods haven't even recognised that."I was the first in streaming, the first in digital TV, when everyone said no, the point is I always try to follow these little niches that I think can blow up...and for me, NFTs are an enormous opportunity.''
''Ethereum is easy and that's become your currency for most swaps and it's become the currency for a lot of smart contracts...and I've held a lot of Ethereum since they've been doing smart contracts...
I think Ethereum right now has an advantage over Bitcoin in terms of regular people, as a store of value and transactional because as more people get into NFT's all they're going to know is Ethereum and they're all going to have to buy Ethereum in order to do it.''Interviewer: 'Wow, so you think Ethereum has an advantage over Bitcoin as a store of value?'
''Right now, for new people coming in, yes, here's my logic: if I decide I like digital art, how do I buy digital art? With Ether. And if there are thousands of people a day, two thousand people a day, coming in, relative to the size of the number of people doing this, that's impactful, because every now and then one of them is going to be a whale and they're going to buy a thousand Ether, to buy that big artwork. And on top of that, we're going to see music and entertainment videos and movies, hosted on rarible or whatever, because that's a better way to sell it.''
"There's nothing in this ecosystem that says you need to buy Bitcoin first in order to transact in Defi or within any of the digital goods marketplaces.''"With digital goods, once it goes in the marketplace, I can continue to get paid. If I'm a photographer or musician or company which distributes movies, I get paid 15, 20, 30 percent every single time it's resold. That ability is crazy important. For NFT's and digital collectibles, also don't have to worry about grading.''
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If I'm going to buy new stuff, I'm going to buy Ethereum on a pullback before I buy Bitcoin, so when Bitcoin pulled back to 30 thousand, I didn't buy more. If Ethereum did pull back to a thousand, I did buy more, and if it does again I will buy more.''
"Like the early days of the internet, with Defi, you invest in the pick and shovels before you invest in the winners.''"Like the early the days of the internet, the user interface was a pain in the ass, the user interface right now is horrible, but there are a bunch of them starting to get it right. A lot of this going to change and that's where the opportunity is.
And that also means that people coming in are going to create some cool apps we haven't seen yet.''
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'In the early days of the pandemic, I would always say, when we look back at 2020, there's going to a bunch of companies that changed the game, that's Defi. America 2.0 is going to be built on blockchain, and a big part of that is going to be Defi.''
