Mark Cuban Says All Meme Coins Are Rug Pulls Waiting to Happen, But That's Also What Makes Them Fun

The Shark Tank star and billionaire entrepreneur said that meme coins are "all a game of musical chairs."

Shark Tank star Mark Cuban is a well-known supporter of Dogecoin, the unique crypto meme coin. However in a current interview, the billionaire entrepreneur and investor stated that he believes that “each meme coin is a rug pull within the works”—however that can also be what makes them enjoyable. 

Meme cash are extraordinarily unstable crypto tokens largely motivated by hype as merchants speculate on their value. They’re usually primarily based on web memes, public figures, or world occasions.

However no matter their inspiration, meme cash have little or no intrinsic worth. Moo Deng is only a cute child hippo, not the way forward for finance. No person ought to have any illusions about that.

“Each single meme coin is a rug pull within the works, proper? As a result of there is not any actual purpose for it to stay round apart from the enjoyable of it,” Cuban informed Farokh Sarmad of Rug Radio, Decrypt’s sister firm. “Meme cash are all a sport of musical chairs.”

Cuban has beforehand been a vocal supporter of Dogecoin, going so far as accepting Dogecoin as cost for merchandise purchases with the Dallas Mavericks, the NBA workforce that he beforehand owned. He later claimed that Dogecoin has extra potential purposes than Cardano, a layer-1 blockchain began by Ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson.

He nonetheless speaks positively of Dogecoin even now. Within the interview, he mentioned the assorted main cash and their perceived advantages, whether or not it is Bitcoin as a retailer of worth and hedge towards fiat forex, or Ethereum with the capabilities of good contracts to energy decentralized apps (dapps). However in his eyes, there’s worth to Dogecoin too.

“After which there’s Dogecoin, which is extra for enjoyable and neighborhood,” he mentioned. “It simply actually is dependent upon the place you are at. And I am a proponent of all of them. I see the enjoyable in it, I see the utility in it, and I see the shop worth of it. So it actually is dependent upon the place you wish to go.”

Cuban’s comment about meme cash being rug pulls is probably going referring to lower-market cap tokens, like these launched on protocols like Pump.fun and Moonshot, as these tasks have a lot much less backing from main gamers and firms. Most of those cash have a fast rise and fall, and nearly by no means acquire any important traction. Only a few of those cash actually hang around for long.

Whereas Dogecoin has the assist of Twitter and Tesla proprietor Elon Musk in addition to different outstanding backers like Cuban, smaller tokens could get a number of social media posts from an influencer earlier than they transfer on to a different coin.

“A part of the sport in meme cash is to time it to see if you are going to make or lose cash,” Cuban defined. “It is like flipping a coin; it is like taking part in roulette. No person is so silly to suppose it is a nice funding—even all of them go on Reddit or Telegram and say: ‘That is one of the best meme coin ever. To the moon child!’”

He attracts parallels between meme coin buying and selling and playing—a probably engaging prospect within the U.S. on condition that some states ban playing. On meme coin manufacturing facility Pump.enjoyable, the prospect of a token launching past a $69,000 market cap hovers round 1.5%. That is comparatively low in distinction to most on line casino video games, although merchants can nonetheless probably make cash on cash that by no means attain that modest degree.

“I am not going to lie: I have a look at them too,” Cuban admitted of meme cash, mocking his personal mindset when buying and selling. “‘Ought to I purchase some? No, do not be silly. Do not be silly.’ However, you recognize, it is like flipping a coin and hoping it comes up. It is only a sport.”