Mark Cuban’s Dallas Mavericks are having a tough week as the front office and coaching staff endures a brutal turnover on the heels of their exit from the NBA playoffs. That came just days after Cuban himself called “total bulls*it” on reports of trouble in the organization. But another area of interest for Cuban has also seen a tough week as a cryptocurrency he invested in abruptly zeroed out amid the ongoing crypto bonanza that’s dominated the financial scene in 2021.
Cuban revealed on Twitter on Wednesday night that he had a considerable wallet of a cryptocurrency called Titan, which earlier in the week saw a huge surge and had been worth as much as $64 USD. But all that came crashing down in a hurry this week, as the Iron Finance project essentially zeroed out to be worth nothing. As CoinDesk explained, Titan was supposed to be what’s called a “stablecoin,” which is a crypto token tied to another asset like a commodity or government currency in an effort to keep its cost stable. But that clearly failed this week.
Due to how the “tokenomics” of this particular DeFi project functions, when new IRON stablecoins are minted, the demand for TITAN increases, driving up its price. Conversely, when the price of TITAN falls dramatically, as was the case on Wednesday evening, the peg becomes unstable.
“TITAN’s price went to $65 and then pulled back to $60. This caused whales [large investors] to start selling,” Fred Schebesta, founder of Finder.com.au and an Iron Finance investor, told CoinDesk via Telegram. “That then led to a big de-pegging of [IRON].”
That crash was swift and caught a lot of people flat-footed. Including Cuban, who said on Twitter that he got “hit” when it started crumbling in value.
https://twitter.com/cope_itulate/status/1405305356914290689
https://twitter.com/mcuban/status/1405306497257586688
The crash comes with some speculating that Cuban may have played a part in its swift rise and fall in the first place. As Fortune detailed, Cuban had written about Titan on his blog just days ago and the coin had seen a swift rise in the aftermath of that before bottoming out to near zero.
His blog post was enthusiastic about the crypto coin and another, QuickSwap. The piece concluded with,“As long as I keep making a good return, I will keep my money invested.” It’s a big about-face for Cuban, who, in 2017, called cryptocurrency a “bubble”.
Many crypto investors follow the lead of crypto-friendly billionaires’ comments—and that could have contributed to the surge. At the start of June 13, the day of Cubans’ blog post, Titan was trading at $29. Three days later, it hit its peak.
Despite that, Cuban said the loss was small but he still wasn’t thrilled about it.
“As a percentage of my crypto portfolio it was small. But it was enough that I wasn’t happy about it,” Cuban told Bloomberg. “But in a larger context it is no different than the risks I take [in] angel investing. In any new industry, there are risks I take on with the goal of not just trying to make money but also to learn. Even though I got rugged on this, it’s really on me for being lazy.”
Hey everybody your money’s completely vaporized due to several glaring flaws in my program thanks for coming out
— warrior cop (@wyatt_privilege) June 17, 2021
It’s yet another example of the wild ride the cryptocurrency market is and how dangerous it can be to invest too much in decentralized finance if you can’t afford to lose it in a hurry.