Billionaire investor Mark Cuban made waves on May 21 when he told the Front Office Sports podcast that he had sold most of his Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC), dramatically declaring that the cryptocurrency “has lost the plot.” To justify his sale, Cuban claimed that during the Iran conflict and other recent stretches of macroeconomic instability and inflationary pressures, gold surged. At the same time, Bitcoin didn’t keep pace — proof, in Cuban’s view, that the coin has failed as a store of value.
Cuban’s frustration echoes what many holders have felt over the last few quarters, and the coin is still 40% lower than its all-time high set in October 2025. But before following Cuban to the exit, it’s worth examining whether his narrative matches the data, so let’s dive in.
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The situation isn’t as bad as it sounds
Cuban’s frustration isn’t baseless — Bitcoin’s price action has been weak compared to the broader market in recent quarters, and the coin is still deeply discounted from its October peak.
Gold did climb to extraordinary heights thanks to a combination of inflation and investors fleeing to perceived safe havens, with its price peaking near $5,595 per ounce on Jan. 29. But that record came before the Iran war started, on Feb. 28, and since the conflict began, the price of gold has actually dropped, whereas Bitcoin has risen from around $67,000 to roughly $77,000 in the same span. So, while investors who bought the coin only in the run-up to its all-time high are still underwater (and likely displeased), the timeline and price action that Cuban proposed don’t exactly line up with reality.
Cuban also argued that “every time the dollar dropped, Bitcoin should have gone up.” That relationship made sense in prior market cycles when Bitcoin was less mature and less distributed, but the underlying dynamics have shifted substantially as the coin has become more integrated into the traditional financial system. A March 2026 analysis by JPMorgan Chase found that Bitcoin’s correlation with the U.S. Dollar Index, a measure of the dollar’s strength against a basket of major currencies, had flipped to positive for the first time since before 2014.
The catalyst for that change was institutional capital flowing through spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs). When large institutions treat Bitcoin as a portfolio allocation rather than a trading position, its price probably won’t behave as it did before, which, as frustrating as it may be, doesn’t mean the asset needs to be sold immediately.
