Billionaire investor Mark Cuban of Shark Tank fame has made a strategic investment in NFT data aggregator CryptoSlam through his venture capital entity Radical Investments.
According to Cuban, “CryptoSlam.io is the go-to destination for tracking all things NFT.” In the announcement, he highlights top-selling NFT collections CryptoPunks and NBA Top Shots. Cuban is the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, an NBA team.
“CryptoSlam has become the industry leader in tracking transactions for NFTs,” Cuban continued. “And that dominance is only growing. I’m excited to be part of the amazing company Randy is putting together.”
CryptoSlam’s development
Cuban is referring to Randy Wasinger, founder and CEO of CryptoSlam. Wasinger started developing the website in 2018. He did this primarily as a way to organize and track NFTs from MLB Champions. These were the first NFTs to be officially licensed by a major professional sports league.
Wasinger said it was life-long affinity for sports cards and memorabilia that drew him to the collectability of NFTs. He realized there needed to be a way to organize NFT data, “in a way that made sense to both collectors and those who saw NFTs as an investment opportunity.”
After launching the first version of CryptoSlam in early 2019, an enthusiastic response convinced him that “we could be on to something special”.
Currently, CryptoSlam tracks over 50 different NFT projects over three different blockchains. Additionally, many major media outlets covering the NFT industry use CryptoSlam-aggregated data. For instance, CNBC, Forbes, the New York Times, among others. Wasinger said:
“Mark’s investment comes at the perfect time for us, as we scale up to support the accelerating growth of the NFT industry.”
Strategic partners Aloomii Inc., Troon Technologies, and GeoAds LLC. also made additional investments.
Mark Cuban the crypto advocate
Cuban has become one of the more vocal advocates for cryptocurrencies among the established business and investment communities. Although skeptical of bitcoin (BTC) in the past, he has recently come out on several fronts in support of blockchain technology.
While his basketball team has accepted bitcoin as payment as early as 2015, he announced recently that they have become the largest Doge coin merchants in the world, after processing over 20,000 DOGE transactions.
In a fireside chat with Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, he discussed investments he made in different decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols.
Earlier, he lauded NFTs as “game-changing” on the Defiant podcast. During that podcast, he also spoke of blockchain’s parallels with the early internet, where Cuban made his fortune. Additionally, he said if he were starting a business today, he would utilize blockchain technology.
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