“I don’t assume it’s right here to remain,” Dave Portnoy stated, referring to meme cash—the identical nook of crypto he’s typically poured gasoline on by his social media antics.
Talking on stage at Consensus 2025 with Tom Farley, CEO of crypto alternate Bullish, the Barstool Sports activities founder peeled again the layers of his quick, chaotic stint within the meme coin world. Along with his standard brash candor, Portnoy described a journey of sudden windfalls, authorized landmines, and the type of public backlash which may make even probably the most hardened web provocateur assume twice.
“I really like the frenzy, I’m a gambler at coronary heart,” he admitted. “However then the good a part of me is like, is it well worth the hate?” The dialog was a part of a broader dialogue about crypto’s tradition of hypothesis and hype, the place meme cash — tokens created extra for jokes than utility — have captured the creativeness of younger, risk-hungry merchants. Portnoy, who constructed Barstool right into a media empire on viral content material and sports activities playing, discovered himself swept into the identical digital fever.
It began with SafeMoon, one of many earliest viral tokens of the COVID-era crypto growth. Portnoy noticed social media posts about merchants making “9,000,000,000%” positive factors, purchased in, made a video mocking its lack of actual worth — and received sued anyway.
“They principally stated SafeMoon paid me to advertise them. Complete lie. Price me $20k to get out of the lawsuit.” he stated.
Undeterred, he pushed additional. Impressed by the concept of launching a Barstool coin and skipping the effort of going public, Portnoy started researching how meme cash are made. That led him to a developer who pitched a token referred to as Libra, allegedly backed by the president of Argentina.
Portnoy purchased $4.5 million value.
“I used to be at SNL with Girl Gaga. I used to be simply typing. I am like, what the hell is occurring right here?” he stated. The developer had informed him Elon Musk would tweet about it. As an alternative, the president disavowed any involvement. “I misplaced all my cash.”
Portnoy says he received fortunate — the developer later reimbursed him in full, although he isn’t positive why. “I am one of many fortunate ones, however , I am not going to not take that cash again.”
Regardless of the losses, Portnoy saved dabbling. He launched cash referred to as Greed and Greed 2, leaning into the satire. One other coin, JailStool, emerged from public outrage at his meme coin experiments. Another person created the token, however Portnoy embraced the identify and posted about it. At one level, he claims, a $1,000 funding ballooned to $7 million — inside an hour.
“It took me 13 years to make that type of cash at Barstool,” he stated.
However what goes up nearly all the time crashes again down. Portnoy says he’s misplaced monitor of what number of occasions he’s been accused of “rug pulls,” a time period for when insiders dump a coin and depart latecomers with nugatory tokens.
He described meme cash as a rigged sport, dominated by a core group of early consumers with buying and selling bots and algorithms who know when to exit. “It is the identical group of winners and it is the identical group of losers.”
That realization appears to have modified his urge for food. Whereas he teased the attainable launch of Greed 3, he admitted the backlash is more durable to abdomen in actual life. One man confronted him in a Las Vegas on line casino, claiming he misplaced $200,000. “It’s all enjoyable and video games behind the pc however that reinforces individuals are shedding and making actual cash, they usually’re not all the time taking accountability for the danger, despite the fact that I believe they need to.”
Regardless of the cash and the memes, he says the meme coin scene is finally unsustainable.
“I get why individuals prefer it,” he stated. “It’s a type of playing, it’s a Ponzi scheme, I don’t imply that in a unfavourable method.”
Portnoy doesn’t declare to have the solutions. But when he’s a weathervane for the place meme coin mania could be heading, the forecast appears to be like grim. “I can not think about it is right here to remain. I believe it is right here to remain for the subsequent 4 years. What occurs after that? I do not know.”
