Mark Cuban waves the Dogecoin.
After saying last month that the cryptocurrency joke “has no intrinsic value,” the billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks said on Thursday that he has decided to accept Dogecoin as a payment option for fans of his NBA franchise.
“The Mavericks have decided to accept Dogecoin as payment for Mavs tickets and merchandise for a very important, earth-shattering reason, because we can!” Cuban said in a press release.
“We chose to do this because sometimes in business you have to do things that are fun, engaging and hopefully generate a lot of PR,” added Cuban. “So we’ll take Dogecoin today, tomorrow, and possibly forever.”
Dogecoin, a currency launched in 2013 as a literal dog memo joke by software engineers, is great for kids who want to learn about finance, Cuban said.
“Dogecoin is less than a dime. You can buy $ 1 or $ 10 and have fun with it all day long, ”Cuban told Forbes in January. He said he bought some for his son and they “look at it and discuss all the price movements and why they are happening. It’s fun and educational for him. “
Last month, Tesla CEO Elon Musk pushed up the price of Dogecoin by claiming he bought some for his son, X → A-Xii.
“I bought Dogecoin for little X so he can be a toddler teacher,” Musk tweeted.
As of Thursday afternoon, Dogecoin was valued at just over 5 cents. That’s relative to Bitcoin, the daddy of all cryptos which has hovered around a $ 50,000 valuation in recent weeks.