During a Christmas rally that has pushed the Bitcoin all time high mark ever higher, a pair of recent tweets indicate that a former critic of the digital currency is continuing to take steps towards a full-blown hodler conversion: billionaire investor and owner of the Dallas Mavericks Mark Cuban.
The Tweet came on December 23rd, when Cuban announced that fans buying Mavericks gear would receive a 25% discount when they used Bitcoin to make their purchase. Oddly enough, however, the report Cuban linked to instead said that purchasers who buy more than $150 worth of gear using Bitcoin would receive a $25 gift card, and did not mention a 25% discount:
Want to spend your $BTC somewhere... Spend it with the Mavs and get a 25 percent discount for using Bitcoin !https://t.co/De7Y5f28s8
— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) December 23, 2020
This gift card offer, as well as a wider Mavericks policy of accepting Bitcoin as payment for tickets, strikes some observers as odd given Cuban’s history of denigrating the asset. Earlier in 2020 he dusted off a zinger he first fired off in September of 2019: that he prefers bananas to Bitcoin as a commodity.
Many have described coming around to Bitcoin’s virtues as a store-of-value as a process and not an event, however, and Cuban seems to be taking the requisite steps.
In a Tweet just today, Cuban seemed to praise Bitcoin’s programmatic monetary policy, saying that publicly traded companies would be wise to restrict their share inflation:
Public companies should learn a lesson from BItcoin and commit to not issue new shares of stock. Ever. Their stock prices would immediately jump.
— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) December 27, 2020
It’s a positive comment that’s part of an ongoing, years long about-face that has landed Cuban on Cointelegraph’s list of Bitcoin critics who have withered in 2020.
Still, hodlers should be cautious about fully welcoming another member into their ranks. As he progresses in his journey towards hard money, Cuban has expressed disdain for what he believes to be “religious” zealotry among holders hoping for a doomsday scenario, and in yet another tweet this week, it’s a theme he seemed to riff on, pretending to be one of the faithful:
Blasphemous I say, just Blasphemous ! https://t.co/Jk47KqY2x6
— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) December 21, 2020