The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin Just Lost Mark Cuban - Here's Why The Billionaire Sold

Episode Date: May 22, 2026

Bitcoin is at a crossroads for Mark Cuban as he reveals he sold most of his BTC after the Iran war exposed its broken hedge narrative, while gold rips and the dollar weakens. Meanwhile, Rep. Nick Begich is pushing the ARMA Act to enshrine a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve into federal law, locking in a 20 year minimum hold and stripping future administrations of the power to dump it. Over on Ethereum, a high profile brain drain at the Foundation has Dankrad Feist and Laura Shin sounding alarms about ideology overtaking tokenomics, with critics warning ETH's "original sin" since Dencun is now coming home to roost. We're breaking down what Cuban's exit really signals, whether ARMA can pass before the midterms, and if Ethereum's identity crisis is the buying opportunity of the cycle or the start of something much worse. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bitcoin just lost. Mark Cuban. It's over for us. Sad day. Sad day. Here's why the billionaire sold. We're going to play a video from Mark Cuban, tell you why he's capitulated on Bitcoin, why he hates us, why he doesn't want to be our friend anymore. But there's a lot of other things happening in the news worth unpacking today. I know that was a compelling intro and it made you just want to tune in and focus on the rest of the show. So let's go. What is up, everybody? Happy Friday. and welcome to my YouTube channel where you're going to like and subscribe. You're getting sleepy.

Never done that before. This mic does not like to do whatever I just tried to do to that mic. So first of all, first of all, I have to say, happy Bitcoin Pizza Day to those who celebrate. 16 years ago on this very day, Laslo Hanjian paid 10,000 Bitcoin for two pizzas. Today, that Bitcoin would be worth roughly 775 million. I have questions.

First of all, that kid has a shirt on that says, I love pizza. I bet he hates his dad and would rather be wearing a shirt that says, I love money. Or I love Bitcoin. The other kid has a heart and actually under it, you can't see it, but it says have fun staying poor. Now, in all seriousness, kudos to Laslo at the time.

He proved that Bitcoin could actually be used his money. he bought some pizzas with it. He could have never known that he could have been basically a billionaire or that this would cause, you know, drama in his family for 10 generations. But a pizza looks really good. But yeah, pizza day. 16 years ago on this very day,

Laslo Hillen paid $10,000 for some pizzas. Now, you may notice this amazing, I'm so bad at the mirror. I was going to look at that. I wanted this side of the car. This amazing car behind me, it is the Lenovo Canadian Grand Pricks. My kid says Grand Pricks.

It's Grand Prix, but we're not cultured in my family. And obviously you guys know that as a result of having worked with OKX for many years, I was a global brand ambassador there, that I became a humongo McLaren fan, and I wanted to shout that out and shout them out. Actually, you know, I don't think people realize that OKX is like fully available. in the United States. It's actually where I trade in the U.S. And I highly encourage you all to do the same. Actually, they had some news today, not available to U.S., but I did see this. It's a good place for us to start.

Nizzi owner and OKX seek to launch perpetual futures tied to oil. To my understanding, remember when I told you that New York Stock Exchange, parent ICE, they invested in OKX and took a board seat. This is the first major product. And this is perpetual oil futures globally, which I think is just incredible. We've obviously seen how popular these have become elsewhere, and I'm assuming this will be 24-7, 365 days a year, clear that, you know, OKX making the move to be an everything app where you can trade everything globally, 24-7-365 in real-time with perps. So just absolutely incredible what we're seeing in the market right now with these products accelerating rapidly. So we have a...

few pieces of news today i'm going to start with our friend mark cubin here because we lost him rest in peace mark uh praise praise be made the lord open uh here's what he had to say let's go upset did that work nope see like some so glitchy that was not my fault i think bitcoin has lost the plot um and when i started buying bitcoin and i've sold all of it um except not all of it most of it. It was because when all the shit hit the fan with the Iran war and, you know, Bitcoin was always the best alternative to fiat currency losing its value. And I always thought it was a better version of gold than gold. Well, gold just blew up and went, you know, the $5,000, Bitcoin dropped. And every time the dollar dropped, Bitcoin should have gone up, you know, because if it's priced

in dollars, it was cheaper. So anybody from around the world could go pay dollar and it just didn't do that not such a hedge no it's not the hedge that i expected to be and that was really disappointing and so i'd say i'm more disappointed in bitcoin not as disappointed in ethereum um and the rest you know the the token stuff the meme coins garbage yeah well uh some things i agree with some things i disagree with meme coins are garbage remember mark was really one of us in the last cycle like he was flipping nfts and stuff he was deep in the rabbit hole and now he has capitulated. So quickly, we got a fact check mark. First of all, I am not one of those people that gets triggered when somebody doesn't like my thing.

Like, Mark's got billions of dollars. He doesn't need Bitcoin. It's totally fine. I don't think he's being a hater. I think he has his reasons. Who cares? It's great. But what I will say is, it's just factually wrong, right? His statement, when shit hit the fan with the Iran war, gold skyrocketed to $5,000 and Bitcoin did nothing. I mean, to fact check that, I'm pretty sure gold skyrocketed to $5,000 before the Iran war actually went down since the war, I think, 11 or 12%, and Bitcoin's up about 20% since the Iran war started. So maybe there was some creative editing to that podcast that I'm unaware of, but gold has

performed worse since the Iran war started and gold and Bitcoin has performed better. Now, in advance of that, he's absolutely correct. Gold went absolutely flying, but it was not in a time of global crisis, bro. We're living through a time of plenty and abundance. Haven't you seen the prices of stocks? Everybody's feeling good right now. So I don't know. It's the best times.

It was the best of times. It was also the best of times. It's just the best of times. So I don't know what Mark's talking about here, to be quite honest. Also, like, you know, the whole thing he just did where he said, like he's more disappointed in Bitcoin than Ethereum. Okay, cool. But Ethereum, and by the way, I'm Ethereum fan.

It's fine. They're having their own little kind of like problems going on right here, right? Ethereum Foundation researchers announced resignations amid ongoing exits. Listen, at least these guys aren't like turning up dead like all their scientists. That's cool. Ethereum's identity crisis is deepening after high profile brain drain frustrates the community. What began earlier this week as shock over more exits of core figures has now evolved into something more existential. according to some community members.

So, like, do we care about the Ethereum Foundation isn't the whole point that, like, there's thousands of developers and millions of holders and nobody really cares about what the foundation does. This doesn't bother me at all, but that said, like, I'm actually quite impressed with Bitcoin and a little bit more disappointed in Ethereum, if we're going to be quite honest. It has underperformed much worse and has, I think, endless competition from another of other chains out there.

So, yeah, man, I don't know if I'm with Mark on this one. I think Mark's great. You know, Shark Tank or whatever. Basketball. Why is Mark View and famous? Oh, yeah, he sold a software company in the boom. Mark's awesome. I've been trying to get him on the show.

I'll tell you, like, Mark, I don't know the guy at all, but I literally just like completely out of nowhere emailed him. and he's always been responsive and we've talked about stuff. We were both collectively dealing with the Voyager bankruptcy. He referred me to his lawyer. Good guy.

Good guy. I'm here for it. But Bitcoin's done fine since he ran more. Just saying. Just saying, Mark. Just saying. Call me. Just saying.

Next story proposed ARMA ARMA. Bill aims to enshrine Strategic Bitcoin Reserve into law. So this was big breaking. Big breaking yesterday. This is from Rep. Nick Begich. I don't know if that's an actual word. Introduce the American Reserve Modernization Act,

which would direct the Treasury to create and maintain a strategic Bitcoin Reserve for a minimum of 20 years and establish a separate stockpile for other government-held cryptocurrencies ahead of the high-stakes U.S. midterm elections. So this is really cool, but didn't Llamis already propose exactly this in the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Act or whatever that was called? It does mandate the consolidation of billions of dollars in digital assets currently scattered across federal agencies from fortunes and penalties and requires transparency through a proof of reserves report. Okay. This basically is just taking the executive order that Trump wrote last year and trying to put it into law.

Most of it already covered in other legal proposals and we can't even get the Clarity Act done. So it's cool that this is being filed, but I'm also filed. filing this for now as a nothing burger because we know that it's not going to be a priority in any way, shape, or form for this government. Very cool that we could have a reserve asset, but yeah, dude, I'm not really buying that as that important at the moment. Sorry, sorry. So I think it's just a reiteration of legislation that we've already seen proposed. So I got this hot take right here about Bitcoin. Interesting stuff. I like this. I use the wrong screen again.

Look at that. Look at that. I literally, like, I don't know which buttons. There's so many buttons. Look at that. You can do that. That one was cool. Just do that.

Wealthiest person in the... Can you still hear me? That's good. Wealthiest person in the world. My company owns 18,712 Bitcoin. That's obviously Musk with SpaceX. Largest asset manager in the world. That's BlackRock.

Most popular ETF in Bitcoin product. Your financial advisor. Bitcoin is volatile and risky. I wouldn't touch it with a 10%. foot pole. Yeah, Bitcoin's dead. We've heard that a lot of times when we're hearing Bitcoin declared dead again. Now, if you missed the news yesterday, SpaceX owns, as I said there, 18,712 Bitcoin. This was in their IPO disclosure. I think that IPO is going to be a disaster. Sorry. But everyone thought, according to on-chain analysts, they only had 8,000 something Bitcoin.

So they had 2.2x as many Bitcoin as we assumed, 10,000 more than we thought. which is sweet. And they haven't sold any. And Tesla has sold some. So listen, this is a rounding year. It's like 0.08% of their projected market cap. But still, this is the wealthiest person in the world. Elon Musk is going to be a trillionaire.

And SpaceX will be the most heavily hyped company. And anyone who owns that's going to have exposure to this Bitcoin. I think this Bitcoin thing might catch on and that you might want to grab some. I'm just saying. I really like Bitcoin at the current prices personally. I think it's great. And I would be buying it and not selling it like your financial advisor might be telling you to do. What did you say?

Bitcoin has been dead dozens of times during my 11-year experience. Ken, I bet we've had like 50 declarations of death already. I'd imagine. Wow. I don't know where this comment came from, but it's good. BSV, Bitcoin's Association's Vision. Sounds like something you get at Houston Spring Break. bad case of BSV

but you just take BCH and clear it right up but do people go to spring break in Houston I went to Topeka Kansas for spring break huge destination like what Houston Spring break did you mean like San Pedro what are the islands there San Pedro Island San Pedro Island San Pitch I don't know man Daytona Beach

like the 80s nobody goes Houston spring break my BSV is acting up right now So you might have seen me break down on The Daily Wolf a story about the innovation exemption coming from the SEC. The early reports, obviously, were that you know, you're going to be able to trade tokenized stocks 24-7-365 without permission from the issuer. This was the language that was originally used in the press release. Hester Perth is very clearly walking that back here. This is from Eleanor Touret.

SEC Commissioner and Crypto Task Force chief Hester Purse is tempering expectations around the agency's contemplated innovation invention, exemption. for tokenized stocks, saying she expects it to apply narrowly to on-chain equity products, not synthetic tokens that mimic stocks without giving investors the same shareholder rights. So appropriately and pleasantly walking back what we thought was going to be an unmitigated disaster. If the innovation exemption just says you can trade one-for-one backed tokenized stocks without them having derivatives or being sent off into defy, I think that's a very reasonable and decent approach to tokenized stocks.

That's great news. Loon Mambo got tossed out of a bar in Daytona Beach. Tell me more. I want more stories. Very sharky down there in the waters. Gotta be careful. New Smyrna Beach, sharp white capital of the world. People don't realize because they're so concerned with great white sharks and

Australia and stuff, we in Florida have way more shark attacks than anyone else on the planet. They're just little bitch sharks. can't catch you the same way. They don't kill you. They just take like a part of a limb or a big chunk. So what else do we have in the news today? This one I find quite astounding. You can tell that I do heavy prep for my Friday morning show, by the way. Heavy prep. I just open a bunch of tabs and then I forget what they are. And then we look back at them. But this is sad. Only 35 protocol out calls cleared two million in monthly revenue last month. Here are the top 25 by revenue. Basically, obviously you see,

you know, tether, circle, hyperliquid, pump fun, the big names up top. Ben, like, we're down, Metamask only makes $2.7 million a month. Digitals, you made that up. It's not a real word. Aerodrome phi, etherfi, guma good, and I? What is GMG and AI? Is that Sanskrit? That's not a word.

But either way, I mean, it's kind of crazy. like, you know, at $2 million earnings a month, and 24, and that's probably gross, not net revenue, you're making, what, $24 million a year in even being optimistic that makes you less than a hundred million dollar company. There's not many unicorns out here. And as it says, the entire on-chain economy runs on maybe 25 businesses. We really need to step it up. But to be honest, like, if you see what's going on in defy right now and all the hacks and stuff,

like how much are you really willing to participate in the on-chain economy? I would say not very much. So honestly, these numbers don't surprise me very much. I mean, I'd be perfectly happy to, you know, just be a protocol making $2 million a month. That'd be pretty tight. But like I'm a guy, not a whole company. So if you saw it this morning, I haven't looked for an update, but Polly Market had a contract exploit, not user funds.

But attackers were removing 5,000 pole. every 30 seconds. Remember when that was Madic? Polygon, it used to go up when it was Madic and down really fast and then up really fast and down really fast. Six hundred K still in so far. Pause all Polymarket activity for now. I think that is hyperbolic. I don't think that there was actually an issue at the end with Polymarket, but once again, like, do we really need mainstream news now? That's going to be like

polymarket exploited all your funds are gone. It's not ideal. Not I. deal. So I don't know. Did you guys watch the Daily Wolf yesterday when I talked about SpaceX? Did you guys watch that? Do you guys watch the Daily Wolf? Tell me in the comments. I'm done. Like, there's nothing to talk about. Let's talk. Let's just hang out. You guys watch the Daily Wolf. Today on the Daily Wolf, I have big plans. Because the news cycle is low. We find it actually, some days, it's just very challenging to show up for that show, even though it's 15 minutes and we're going to 20 minutes, by the way,

in two weeks. So I'm going to start incorporating. rating guests on the daily wolf, which would be awesome. But some days I show up and I'm like, man, I don't, like, there's not 15 minutes of this stuff to talk about, you know? And so you'll notice, like, last week, I went on that tirade last Thursday, I think, where I was like, I'm scrapping the news and I just kind of told you why I care about Bitcoin. Well, today we like, I did a very, very deep dive on the Federal Reserve. And the whole show today is just going to be like the history of the Fed and so you understand just how insane the Federal Reserve system is. Because I, you know, I was like, I looked at the news and I was like, you know, I've been planning and kind of working on

getting all of my notes together on that. And so that's what we're going to do today on there. So I'm not going to say it will be the same kind of rant, although I probably do end up ranting anytime I talk. But it's a full 15 minutes on. the Federal Reserve. And you guys might not know how F'd up the Federal Reserve is if you've never done the deep dive. And I don't really, I'm not going to dive into like the deep conspiracy theory like creature from Jekyll Island stuff. But I think it's very important that people understand what the Federal Reserve is, who it was created for and who benefits today, even, because it's going to blow your mind. And in my deep research on the Federal Reserve, one thing that I had

totally missed until I was researching the past couple weeks. You guys might not know this, but I am entirely my own researcher, me and Claude and chat TPT. But yeah, I don't have like a team of research. I was talking to Rand Nooner yesterday and we were on a stream and he's like, oh, my researchers should be online and he tapped. I'm like, bro, you've got like people. I was like a guy who thinks about stuff, you know?

But yeah, you know, I don't, you know, I come up. That daily wolf, it's entirely. me. I'm not saying there's not other people who help. John, you're great. Brian, you guys, you're great. But as far as content, it's entirely, entirely me. So yeah, the Federal Reserve, I think you should watch it. But the thing that blew my mind was, you know, during the Great Recession, the Great Financial Crisis, 2008. Do you know who was the youngest Wunderkind Federal Reserve Board member at that time from 2006, 2011? The guy. who, you know, behind Hank Paulson and all those guys oversaw the bailouts of the biggest institutions

and made sure nobody went to jail? Do you know? His name's Kevin Warsh. Yeah. Now he's the Fed chairman. I think he's getting probably going to be there today. Now, I'm not saying Jekyll Island isn't a real place with real history, you Dumbo, Snowman. Just kidding, you're not a Dumbo. An elephant. flies. I cover the history. I'm saying I'm not going down the entire deep conspiracy theory side of it that's presented in that book, which many much can be soon. Actually, the first few minutes of what I'm going to talk about will be the actual meeting in 1911 and who was there, name by name, breaking it down. I'm not, I'm very well aware it's a real place with history. You guys just freak out at anything I'd say. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. I pulled up a chart earlier. We haven't done this in a while. You want to see something? Everybody's talking about Zcash.

If I was in, I'm dumb, so I didn't buy Zcash or hyperliquid. But if I was in Zcash right now, I'd be selling it. That's massive bearish divergence on the daily chart with the most overbought it's ever been. I don't know. If you were a chart guy, I would be starting to get concerned about crypto markets at the moment to some degree. I talked to Rand, ran my conversation with him will be out tomorrow. and he went through all the charts and he was very concerned about STRC. And, man, you know, sometimes he's got to sit with someone who's like super bearish.

I do it with Mike McClone like seven times a week just to make you think about stuff. Mike McClone yet to affect my bearishness yet. But Mark Cuban still wears a condom with his wife. Should I even talk anymore? Are we done? I think we're done. I think we're done. Guys, I'm serious, though.

Tune in to the Daily Wolf today. wear your condoms while you watch the show. You're going to want to make sure because you get very dirty. You learn about the Federal Reserve. It's so weird here. You guys are so weird. But I love you.

They can hear you laughing. Look, LOL, producer laughing is hilarious. You guys can hear him? What's the Emmy laughing in the background? No, because she's not a dude. You guys can hear John. He laughs sometimes. Can they hear them?

can't hear your mic, right? Sad. We could go like full Howard Stern and then you can really just hear him laughing. It's fun to do this in front of a live studio audience of one. Good time around here. No. That dude has a chick laugh. Dude, he will, God will kill you. He's on Reddit Trutide, bro. I honestly, I tweeted this this morning. Like, I'm reading all these Reddit Trutide studies. Have you guys seen it. It's like the miracle peptide. I want to literally get fat just so I can take it. I can't get fat if I tried. Do they have a retitrue weight gainer that I could take? It like kills cancer. It reduces, you know, temptation, makes you not an alcoholic, you know, win the lottery for you. It knows the numbers of the roulette wheel in Vegas before

you spin. This is an incredible drug, but like if I took that, I think I would turn sideways and literally disappear. Let's see your producer. put him on camera. Come on, one day. They're calling you Reda John. Reda? Reda John. You don't play. What about a series on privacy? Okay. Do that. Anyways.

Still wears a condom with his wife. I'm using this. Anyways. I'm going to leave before I say something really stupid. Guys, tune into the Daily Wolf today. Okay? Thank you swear. Do it. Pizza day.