Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban, a longtime cryptocurrency advocate, says the COVID pandemic proves just how irrelevant traditional financial institutions are.
Citing barriers to receiving and cashing stimulus checks during the pandemic, the number of days banks need to clear checks, transaction costs and the cost to make money, Cuban said shifting to digital currencies is a no-brainer.
“The people who needed the money the most got it the slowest,” Cuban told Rob Lowe on his podcast, “Literally!” last week.
“If everybody had a digital bank account, with or without digital coins, the money would just go just like that, right into your account from the Treasury, whenever there was a stimulus.”
Cryptocurrency is a digital or virtual currency that can be used to buy goods and services, but is secured by cryptograph, which makes it nearly impossible to counterfeit or double-spend.
Millions of Americans during the pandemic struggled to get access to their stimulus checks, including veterans and Social Security beneficiaries.
Cuban isn’t the only celebrity beefing up crypto. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has long been an enthusiast, and in February his company bought $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin and said it would soon accept the digital currency to purchase vehicles. Rapper Snoop Dogg and Kiss singer Gene Simmons have also jumped on the bandwagon.
Cryptocurrencies have skyrocketed in 2021 – with bitcoin up 95% year-to-date, ether up 380%, and dogecoin soaring 13,000%, according to Business Insider.
Bitcoin, the original and world’s most popular crypto that launched in 2009, was designed as an alternative to federal money. It is based on blockchain technology, a decentralized, distributed ledger that records the provenance of a digital asset.
Source: Newmax
