Dogecoin co-creator became no-coiner Jackson Palmer believes entrepreneur and “Shark Tank” host Mark Cuban has “drank the Kool-Aid” when it comes to cryptocurrency.
In an interview, Palmer told Insider that crypto is a “grift”. He argued that while Cuban is not a paid influencer or shill, he has been “indoctrinated” by the world of crypto and Web3.
“They actively see it as an ongoing way to extract profits,” Palmer said of crypto investors such as Cuban and a16z co-founder Marc Andreessen.
“It’s not like they’ve been paid once to promote something — it’s that they want to be the ones who have control or ownership or a large stake in this kind of mining, cutthroat cryptocurrency system,” Palmer said.
Cuban shrugged off Palmer’s comments and recounted Decrypt via e-mail that “everyone can say what they want. I’m still a big fan of crypto.”
“The hard part is separating the speculation from the underlying value,” Cuban said. “Some people get caught up in the speculation side. I don’t.”
Back in January, Cuban talked about “The problem with Jon Stewart” podcast that he is heavily invested in cryptocurrency, with 80% of his portfolio in crypto-related projects outside of “Shark Tank.”
Cuban told Decrypt that since then, “it has certainly fallen.” But he has “slowed down” much of his other investment activity to focus on the pharmacy startup Cost Plus Drugs.
The billionaire entrepreneur is also into NFTshaving invested in several NFT startups over the past year, including marketplaces Nifty’s and SuperRarethe Ethereum based game Axie Infinityand NFT analysis firm CryptoSlam. NFTs are blockchain-based tokens used to prove ownership over digital assets. The market for NFTs exploded over the past two years into a multi-billion dollar industry, although sales of these assets have slowed considerably in recent months.
Back in February, Cuban became embroiled in an NFT controversy then @NFT Instagram account– managed by a company he had invested in – was banned after allegations of posting paid content promoting NFT projects without disclosing the posts as advertising.
Leverage Game Media had previously mistakenly listed Cuban as the founder and manager of a number of different Instagram accounts. But the site was revised, removing Cuban from the list of founders after Cuban said so Decrypt: “I’m an investor, I don’t run the company.”
Palmer’s comments come as no surprise to those who have followed his podcast “Griftonomics”, where he criticizes all things crypto. technology” that preys on “financially desperate and naive.”
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