Share this article

Most Influential 2021: Mark Cuban

“It will have the same impact on business and consumers as the internet did, if not more.”

Updated May 11, 2023, 4:31 p.m. Published Dec 7, 2021, 2:08 p.m.
(Adam B. Levine/Pixelmind.ai)
jwp-player-placeholder

When “Shark Tank” personality Mark Cuban sees the potential in something, he’s willing to put up big. This year the emergent world of decentralized finance (DeFi) received a boost of legitimacy (and capital) when the Dallas Mavericks basketball team owner said DeFi represented a real challenge to and advancement on the traditional banking system. Like all of us, the billionaire investor has been learning as he goes – sometimes leading to embarrassing public slip-ups. But Cuban isn’t afraid to take on a little risk, even gambling with his hard-earned street cred by calling for coherent crypto regulation.

This post is part of CoinDesk’s “Most Influential 2021″ series.

How is crypto going to change the world by 2030?

I think it will change how businesses are created, managed and funded. It will change personal and corporate banking. Trustless businesses will be perceived as better. We will use challenge-based optimistic rollups as part of trustless applications that handle insurance claims [and] applications for any number of things.

It will have the same impact on business and consumers as the internet did, if not more.

What was one lesson from this year?

My most important thing I learned was to take the time to dig deep into the tech, from learning Solidity to taking deep dives on tech like zk-rollups and optimistic rollups.

(Kevin Ross/CoinDesk)
(Kevin Ross/CoinDesk)



More For You

Protocol Research: GoPlus Security

GP Basic Image

What to know:

  • As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
  • GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
  • Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.

More For You

Bhutan Debuts TER Gold-Backed Token on Solana

Buddha point, Thimphu, Bhutan (Passang Tobgay/Unsplash)

The Himalayan kingdom introduced TER, a Solana-based token backed by physical gold and issued through Gelephu Mindfulness City.

What to know:

  • Bhutan introduced TER, a sovereign-supported gold-backed token issued via Gelephu Mindfulness City and custodied by DK Bank, offering a blockchain-based representation of physical gold.
  • The token runs on Solana, giving international investors digital portability and on-chain transparency while mimicking the experience of traditional gold purchases.
  • TER follows Kyrgyzstan’s USDKG launch, highlighting a growing trend of smaller nations issuing asset-backed digital currencies tied to audited reserves as part of broader economic and technological strategies.