Mark Cuban’s Alleged Ethereum Wallet Suggests He Likes This Altcoin

The crypto space has been significantly affected by various influencers. The most notable of which, is Elon Musk. In a much more positive and open light however, is Mark Cuban—a supporter of the technology, who appears too busy to troll twitter.

Crypto Space to Leave Elon Musk in the Rear View Mirror

Fans of religious texts and Western culture are familiar with the phrase contained in the King James Bible – “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away”. As the week starts with a crypto wipeout, many harken to these words of wisdom. Except this time, the (self-proclaimed) ‘lord’ of the crypto space is the Dogefather himself, Elon Musk.

During 2021, the Tokenist noted Elon Musk’s impact on the crypto space on multiple occasions. After he joined Michael Saylor in buying $1.5 billion worth of BTC, the ongoing bullrun seemed endless. Yet, it was becoming increasingly clear that Elon Musk represents a source of corrosive volatility, a centralization problem if you will.

As a result of Musk’s leveraging of social media power, half a trillion has been cleaned out from the total crypto market cap. Although this represents a significant reduction from last week’s peek of $2.5 trillion, it bears keeping in mind that just a month ago it had reached a milestone of $2.25 trillion, matching the market cap of the world’s top 10 banks.

In other words, hopping from one peak to the next was bound to land one in a valley. With Musk’s weakened credibility as a pusher for a meme coin with infinite inflation, and myopically painting Bitcoin as a legitimate environmental concern, the crypto space can exhale a sigh of relief and move forward. Although Bitcoin’s position as a sovereign, deflationary currency is not likely to significantly shift, smart contracts continue to bring value to the table on their own.

DeFi Altcoins Rely on Their Utility

While Bitcoin represents the first DeFi generation and hodling passivity, smart contracts entice greater engagement, exploration and experimentation. Demonstrating these widely different approaches to the crypto space, DeFi smart contracts hold almost two times the ETH than is present on centralized exchanges.

In fact, the combination of low transaction fees and yield farming gains remains a consistent driver for DeFi altcoins, impervious to Musk’s recent crypto sabotage. For instance, without even having implemented smart contracts yet, Cardano (ADA) matches Polygon’s (MATIC) price performance.

Cardano’s (ADA) price rose due to its upcoming Alonzo upgrade, which will enable smart contracts. On the other hand, MATIC is experiencing explosive growth projected to rise 5x by the end of the year. Just during the last day or so, MATIC’s price rose by 30%. It owes this success by running on Ethereum’s Layer 2 sidechain, drastically decreasing transaction fees and massively increasing the influx of hungry yield farmers.

Mark Cuban’s Wallet Bursting with DeFi Altcoins

Not to entangle another billionaire in the crypto space, it bears checking out what Mark Cuban has been up to in the DeFi space.  After all, the Shark Tank co-host established his public persona by judging other people’s entrepreneurial prowess.

If you recall, courtesy of pseudonymous crypto researcher Dogetoshi, Cuban unintentionally revealed his Ethereum’s wallet address back in January, when he got excited by a new NFT find on the Rarible marketplace. Inevitably, this led to his wallet activities being tracked which leads us to the discovery that Cuban recently decided to swap 120 ETH ($402k) for AlchemixFi (ALCX) token.

This little-known DeFi protocol has quite a novel approach to managing debt. While ALCX is the protocol’s governance token, AlchemixFi tokenomics relies on Alchemix USD (alUSD) stablecoin, which is backed by a future yield. This means that when you deposit DAI stablecoin as a collateral, you mint alUSD tokens in a 2:1 ratio. In other words, for 2 DAI, you can borrow up to 1 alUSD – a synthetic derivative.

On its face, this would translate to just putting in dollars for dollars. However, the trick is that those staked DAI stablecoins are used for yield farming by linking the mining pool to Yearn.Finance and other DeFi yield farming protocols. In effect, this decreases the debt incurred over time.  

The AlchemixFI project is in its very early stage, but Cuban’s significant commitment to it is a stark departure from his fellow billionaire’s embarrassing tweeting about a dog coin that has no inherent value.

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With so many DeFi protocols and blockchains to choose from, do you think the space is currently too overwhelming for newcomers? Or are the yield farming gains worth the effort? Let us know in the comments below.