Mark Cuban and JPMorgan Reveal Their Crypto Secrets
The world’s economy is facing turbulent times amidst the Russia-Ukraine conflict and a backdrop of other serious threats to the financial world such as the increasing inflation number and the winter cryptocurrency price crashes.
Cryptocurrencies are more than 40% down from their 2022 peak, which has led to a very silent and quiet market for the last couple of months. But many big investors such as billionaire Mark Cuban and one of the biggest hedge funds in the world, JPMorgan, are still very bullish on cryptocurrencies.
80% of Mark Cuban’s investments are in crypto-related companies
Mark Cuban is the owner of the Dallas Mavericks and is a popular VC investor from Shark Tank. But recently, it has come to light that Cuban has been investing more heavily in sectors linked closely to Fintech and blockchain technology. While Cuban has always been an avid supporter of cryptocurrencies, the billionaire revealed that more than 80% of his new investments are centred around cryptocurrencies.
Appearing on a podcast with Jon Stewart, he talked mainly about Bitcoin and Ethereum. While he thinks Bitcoin is the new-age gold, he believes that Ethereum is the closest thing the cryptocurrency space has to a real currency.
While on the podcast, Cuban said that a token being decentralised and trustless was the key factor in bringing him into the field. This gives an equal vote to owners, dependent solely on the number of cryptocurrencies they hold.
Cuban went on to say that he expected fields such as banking, insurance and even the book industry to be disrupted with cryptocurrencies. Talking about Ethereum, he mentioned that the deployment of smart contracts allows a variety of applications to be built on these blockchain networks — that facilitate decentralised banking, finance and other investments such as Non-Fungible tokens.
The problem
While cryptocurrencies have become the talk of the town since the beginning of 2021, many fear investing in them, due to the volatility and risk associated with them. Cuban links this to the start of the internet era in 1995- where people feared this was a bubble, or others decided to go all in the space. The Dallas Mavericks owner says the main problem with the current digital market has to do with the abundance of choice. Cuban does not think that a majority of the cryptocurrencies will have much value in the next 10 to 15 years, so the key is to invest in projects which have a real possibility of growth and building value along the way.
Cuban looks at cryptocurrencies as any other asset, and will only invest if he sees the value in it.
https://twitter.com/mcuban/status/1481304463075852295?s=20&t=sRqLpWru-MaFid9HCsAtMg
JPMorgan buys property in the metaverse
The global financial services lender has been notorious for its support for cryptocurrencies, but this time, JPMorgan has announced its entry into the metaverse. A lot has been said about big companies and CEOs on their plans to enter the metaverse, but there has been no real information on their own investments, plans or strategies. JPMorgan on the other hand has become the first lender to actually buy property in the metaverse.
The company has opened their own lounge in Decentraland, which is one of the most popular platforms for building the metaverse using blockchain technology. The Onyx lounge was revealed last week and is named after the bank’s suite of Ethereum based services.
https://twitter.com/WatcherGuru/status/1493662818557734919
Other than the opening, JPMorgan has also released a paper exploring how other businesses can work and find opportunities from the metaverse. The head of crypto and metaverse for the company, Christine Moy had the following to say after this announcement.
“There is a lot of client interest to learn more about the metaverse. We have put together our white paper to help clients cut through the noise and highlight what the current reality is, and what needs to be built next in technology, commercial infrastructure, privacy/identity and workforce, in order to maximise the full potential of our lives in the metaverse”.
The global lending company is already identifying which sectors to tap on the blockchain world, and have found out that the digital real estate sector has boomed by 200% in the last year alone. Their documents state that the average pricing of a parcel of virtual land is now worth more than $12,000, which is up from the average price of $6,000 during the start of 2021.
This find could be one of the reasons to purchase the property on Decetraland so early on, especially since the crypto token of the metaverse space, MANA has corrected by over 40% since the start of 2022.
With influential billionaires and one of the biggest private financial lenders in the world still advocating the benefits of the digital space despite the recent drawbacks, the cryptocurrency space looks very bullish in the long term.
