Mark Cuban Gets Burned on Crypto — Responds by Calling for Someone to Regulate Him

Rudy TakalaJun 17th, 2021, 5:24 pm
 
Mark Cuban Robyn Beck/Getty Images

Robyn Beck/Getty Images

Mark Cuban is calling for more cryptocurrency regulation after one of his new investments took a southbound turn on Wednesday.

The incident involved a token called TITAN. Cuban wrote in a Sunday blog post — when TITAN was priced at $30 — that he anticipated earning an annualized return of 206 percent simply by providing liquidity to an exchange related to the token. Cuban’s exposition fueled extreme volatility in the token’s value, leading to a spike up to $63 as of Wednesday — before it crashed to less than a penny as of Thursday.

“The investment wasn’t so big that I felt the need to have to dot every I and cross every T,” Cuban told Bloomberg in an email. “I took a flyer and lost. But if you are looking for a lesson learned , the real question is the regulatory one. … There should be regulation to define what a stable coin is and what collateralization is acceptable. Should we require $1 in U.S. currency for every dollar or define acceptable collateralization options, like us treasuries or?”

Cuban told the publication he had been “rugged.” The term is used to describe cryptocurrencies that collapse as their founders abscond with investors’ money — usually with a technical exploit — though that wasn’t quite what happened in TITAN’s case. Iron Finance, the team behind the token, said in a Thursday blog post that it “experienced the world’s first large-scale crypto bank run,” which happens when too many investors try to withdraw their funds simultaneously. They also said they were hiring a third party to investigate what happened.

Ironically, as CoinDesk noted, some observers believe Cuban’s participation “exacerbated” the problem by fueling unfounded speculation among investors. Skeptics took an accordingly critical eye to Cuban’s call for new regulation — with notable crypto tweeters criticizing the Mavericks owner:

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