Since starting to accept dogecoin as payment for merchandise in March, the Dallas Mavericks organization has seen substantial sales made with the meme-inspired cryptocurrency, according to team owner Mark Cuban. In an effort to continue this push, Cuban announced Thursday that the organization will offer “special pricing” for those paying with dogecoin during the Mavericks’ summer sale.
Though dogecoin was created as a joke and its creators never intended for it to be taken seriously, Cuban says it has a unique use case over other cryptocurrencies.
“It’s a medium that can be used for the acquisition of goods and services,” Cuban tells CNBC Make It. “The community for doge is the strongest when it comes to using it as a medium of exchange.”
In April, Cuban tweeted that dogecoin is the “one coin” that people actually use for transactions, though he has previously said that ether is used as digital currency too.
“Ethereum is a digital version of a currency,” Cuban told Ellen DeGeneres in April. “And then you got dogecoin, which is just fun. But the weird part about it [is that] it went from being a cryptocurrency joke to now becoming something that’s becoming a digital currency.”
Cuban sees bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market value, more as a “digital version of gold” than a currency, he told DeGeneres. That’s because bitcoiners typically hold their stake long-term and view it as an asset that will appreciate.
But that doesn’t mean that bitcoin and ether aren’t used as currency as well. In June, El Salvador became the first country to adopt bitcoin as legal tender, and it can now be used to pay for goods and services there. The bitcoin community foresees global adoption for the cryptocurrency as well, but critics say it is far too risky and volatile to be used as a currency.
Ether is also widely used for payment of digital assets, such as NFTs, or nonfungible tokens, which are now a multibillion-dollar industry.
However, financial experts are highly skeptical of cryptocurrencies as a whole due to their speculative nature and warn that people should only invest what they can afford to lose. Some experts say to be especially cautious when investing in dogecoin in particular, since it lacks the scarcity and technological development that bitcoin has, for example.
In the past, Cuban has also admitted that dogecoin isn’t the best investment, despite his bullish outlook. Nonetheless, Cuban owns dogecoin with his 11-year-old son, Jake, along with bitcoin and altcoins such as ether.
Disclosure: CNBC owns the exclusive off-network cable rights to “Shark Tank.”
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