After only three days accepting Dogecoin (DOGE) as a form of payment, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is predicting the price of the token will eventually hit $1.
In a Saturday tweet, Cuban said customers had used more than 20,000 Dogecoin — roughly $1,018 at the time of publication — in transactions for the Dallas Mavericks, claiming the franchise was now “the largest Dogecoin merchant in the world." The billionaire predicted that if basketball fans were to purchase 6,556,000,000 DOGE worth of Mavericks merchandise, the price of the token would “definitely hit $1.”
The Mavericks were one of the first NBA franchises to recognize crypto as a form of payment for tickets and merchandise, having started accepting Bitcoin (BTC) through wallet company BitPay two years ago. Mavericks fans can also pay for gear and souvenirs with Bitcoin Cash (BCH), USD Coin (USDC), Gemini dollar (GUSD), Paxos Standard (PAX) and Binance USD (BUSD).
Despite being created as a joke, DOGE has surged in the last few months as billionaires including Cuban and Tesla CEO Elon Musk have mentioned the token on social media. Musk’s tweets have likely contributed to the price of the token rising from $0.01 in January to an all-time high of $0.078. At the time of publication, the DOGE price is $0.0509, meaning the token would need to surge 1,864% to reach $1.
The Dallas Mavericks owner previously described DOGE as an "economics teaching tool," saying the token was the "best entertainment bang for your buck available" on the crypto market. Even with the surge in DOGE payments for the basketball franchise, Cuban said he was still "having fun" and hasn't changed his opinions about the token.