Mark Cuban had once said Bitcoin is the superior version of gold. However, the long-time crypto bull recently disclosed selling 80% of his BTC holdings, citing the token’s failure to act as a safe-haven asset amid dollar weakness, geopolitical dynamics, and worldwide economic volatility.
He also expressed his disappointment about BTC prices falling amid rising gold prices. ‘When all this s**t hit the fan with the Iran war, Bitcoin was always the best alternative to fiat currency losing its value and I always thought it was a better version of gold than gold. Well, gold just blew up… bitcoin dropped. And every time the dollar dropped, bitcoin should’ve gone up … and it just didn’t do that,’ the Shark Tank star had remarked recently.
Cuban’s sharp U-turn on cryptocurrencies indicated that his entire sentiment around Bitcoin has changed as fatigue over the prospects of the token have set in. On BTC’s poor performance year-to-date, he mentioned it was ‘not the hedge I expected it to be, and that was really disappointing, and so I’d say I’m more disappointed in Bitcoin, not as disappointed in Ethereum, and the rest… garbage.’
Back Highlights BTC Returns Since the Middle East Conflict
While Cuban believed that BTC failed to act as a geopolitical hedge, Blockstream CEO Adam Back refuted Cuban’s view that BTC has lost the plot, citing recent market data that doesn’t align with Cuban’s views.
The CEO highlighted how Bitcoin prices have surged by 25% to 30% since the Middle East tension escalated, up from a trough of around $60,000 per token.
‘Bitcoin is up 25-30% from the ~$60k bottom … vs S&P500 up 11%, DJIA up 5%. and gold fell -14%. so i don’t know what @mcuban is trying to say .. doesn’t line up with data unless he sold the bottom,’ Back wrote in a post on X late last week.
bitcoin is up 25-30% from the ~$60k bottom … vs S&P500 up 11%, DJIA up 5%. and gold fell -14%. so i don’t know what @mcuban is trying to say .. doesn’t line up with data unless he sold the bottom.
— Adam Back (@adam3us) May 23, 2026
Several experts believe Cuban failed to understand the fundamentals of the asset, adding that Bitcoin’s price trajectory had stayed consistent since its earliest days, navigating predictable phases over the years.
Back believes that the BTC price drop earlier was due to the ’10/10 event’ and halving-period cyclicality, which are both uncorrelated to gold price gains amid a dynamic geopolitical landscape. ‘That was unrelated… more about 10/10 event, maybe some negative reflexivity because of part of halving period cyclicality. Bitcoin is short term-volatile,’ he had noted.
Back’s response to Cuban centres on the time horizon instead of any single data point. ‘You don’t get the outlier Sharpe ratio over longer durations, without volatility. So it comes with the territory,’ he had explained in an X post.
As one of Bitcoin’s most outspoken maximalists, Back also made his BTC case in multiple X posts shared last week. He had urged his followers to ‘buy bitcoin, hodl, repeat,’ while cautioning that he expected the efficient market hypothesis to value alternative coins at near zero.
Overall, Bitcoin’s risk-adjusted returns over the years have outpaced those of US equities, gold, and even real estate.
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