Maybe you know Mark Cuban as the owner of the NBA basketball team Dallas Mavericks ("Mavs") and thus former boss of Dirk Nowitzky? Or maybe you know him from "Shark Tank"?

Or maybe you were already active on the stock market during the "dotcom bubble" and know him because he sold his company Broadcast.com to Yahoo! for many billions of US dollars and became a billionaire as a result?

Wherever you know Mark Cuban from - maybe you don't know him at all! - One thing is clear: the man knows his stuff. And he knows the IT sector as well as the financial sector. Therefore, you should listen carefully to what he says. Especially since he possesses a quality that can be interpreted negatively, but which I consider essential in this day and age: He can see past misjudgements and is willing to correct himself.

Some might call that opportunistic. But if Bill Gates were to stick to his credo that the internet distracts people and therefore lowers productivity, so that it could never catch on, Microsoft would perhaps no longer exist. But Bill Gates realised his misjudgement early on and corrected himself. This led to the browser war with Netscape, which Microsoft won in the end. Even at the cost of almost being crushed by the US authorities.

                                 

Mark Cuban sees Ethereum (ETH) in pole position

But let's get back to Mark Cuban. In the past, he was not always a fan of Bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptocurrencies, but he has now corrected himself. He still sees Bitcoin (BTC) itself as technically backward, which is not entirely wrong. But he seems to have become a big fan of Ethereum (ETH) and has invested there himself. He also spoke very positively about Decentralised Finance (DeFi) and Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT). Specifically, he believes that both are interesting things that have become possible primarily through Ethereum (ETH) and its ability to create smart contracts. He outed himself as a collector of NFTs and - unsurprisingly as the owner of an NBA basketball team - spoke very positively about the "NBA Top Shots" app developed by Flow (Dapper Labs) together with the NBA. He also believes that Ethereum (ETH) smart contracts have the potential to revolutionise the (financial) world.

But he even went one step further and now it is getting interesting for everyone, including shareholders of Silicon Valley tech companies. So interesting, in fact, that I think they should definitely no longer leave the crypto market out of the equation. Because according to Mark Cuban, Ethereum (ETH) smart contracts even have the potential to destroy the business models of numerous so-called cloud software companies sooner or later.

Blockchain-based projects such as Siacoin (SC), which offer storage space on corresponding servers, have been around for some time. Of course, these young projects are still far from the standards of Amazon AWS or Microsoft Azure. But alongside smaller providers like Box, Dropbox or Pure Storage, they are also attacking these big players head-on - and thanks to the decentralised structure, they definitely have decisive advantages in the longer term.

But there are many more exciting projects in the crypto scene. One day, even innovative companies like C3.ai or Tesla could be attacked head-on. You don't think so? Well, we have already included one such token, the Fetch.ai (FET) token, in our "Krypto Trader" sample portfolio. Fetch.ai (FET) is a project founded in Cambridge, UK, that deals with artificial intelligence and is currently particularly popular in Asia.

Since the introduction of the (still) Ethereum-based ERC20 token, it has more than tripled in value and since its inclusion in the "Krypto Trader" sample account on 23 February 2021 (we tried it before, but were unfortunately too "stingy" with the buy limit) it has increased in price by around +90%. In comparison, take a look at how the high-tech stocks on the Nasdaq have performed since 23 February 2021, keyword: rising interest rates at the long end or interest rate fear.

I am of course keeping an eye on these developments, which Mark Cuban openly addressed recently, both in "Krypto Trader" and in "TecTrader". I even think that I am looking a little further into the future than Mark Cuban. Because I think that Ethereum (ETH) was the "can opener" for developments such as DeFi or NFTs, just as Bitcoin (BTC) was for cryptocurrencies in general. But I believe that Ethereum (ETH) is currently under pressure from all sides.

Most recently, there was the so-called Mary upgrade for Cardano (ADA), which now makes NFTs possible there as well. Basically, I think that Ethereum (ETH) has such an outstanding market position that challengers such as Cardano (ADA), EOS, Tezos (XTZ) or NEO (in China) will not easily knock it off its throne. Especially since Ethereum (ETH) - thanks to this competitive pressure - is not simply resting and developing. 

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