Mark Cuban and Jackson Palmer Butt Heads

Jackson Palmer, co-creator of crypto Dogecoin and no-coiner, feels entrepreneur and “Shark Tank” presenter Mark Cuban has “drink the Kool-Aid” when it comes to cryptocurrencies.

Palmer told Insider in an interview that bitcoin is a “grift,” and that although Cuban isn’t a paid influencer or propagandist, he has been “indoctrinated” by the world of crypto and Web3.

Palmer described crypto investors like as Cuban and a16z co-founder Marc Andreessen as “actively seeing it as a continuous means to extract wealth.”

“It’s not like they’ve been paid once to promote something—that it’s they want to be in charge or have ownership or a huge part in this sort of extractive, gritty cryptocurrency system,” Palmer said.

Cuban dismissed Palmer’s remarks, telling Decrypt through email that “everyone may say anything they want.” I’m still a big admirer of cryptocurrency.”

“The tricky thing is separating the speculation from the fundamental value,” Cuban remarked. “Some folks get swept up in the speculating.” I don’t.”

Cuban said on the podcast “The Problem with Jon Stewart” in January that he is substantially involved in bitcoin, with 80% of his portfolio engaged in crypto-related companies outside of “Shark Tank.”

“It’s definitely declined since then,” Cuban told Decrypt, but he’s “slowed down” a lot of his other investing activities to concentrate on his pharmacy firm Cost Plus Drugs.

The wealthy entrepreneur has also invested in other NFT firms in the past year, including marketplaces Nifty’s and SuperRare, the Ethereum-based game Axie Infinity, and NFT analytics company CryptoSlam.

NFTs are blockchain-based tokens used to demonstrate ownership of digital assets. The market for NFT has grown into a multibillion-dollar business in the previous two years, albeit sales of these assets have slowed significantly in recent months.

Cuban got entangled in an NFT dispute in February when the @NFT Instagram account—managed by a firm he’d invested in—was suspended after charges of uploading sponsored material promoting NFT projects without declaring the posts as advertising.

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