Last week, US billionaire investor Mark Cuban revealed that he had sold most of his Bitcoin holdings. By itself, that’s a fairly unremarkable development, but his reasons for doing so point to a deeper fundamental facing the cryptocurrency space.

Cuban had been a late convert to crypto, but has been one of its most prominent evangelists in recent years. But after months of macro uncertainty and a weakening dollar, Bitcoin has failed to live up to its billing as a hedge, prompting Cuban to sell. 

“Bitcoin has lost the plot,” he said on a recent podcast. “I always thought it was a better version of gold than gold. Well, gold just blew up, Bitcoin dropped. Not the hedge I expected it to be.”

For a nascent asset class trying to…