“I don’t think it’s here to stay,” Dave Portnoy mentioned, referring to meme cash—the identical nook of crypto he’s typically poured gasoline on by way of his social media antics.
Talking on stage at Consensus 2025 with Tom Farley, CEO of crypto trade Bullish, the Barstool Sports activities founder peeled again the layers of his quick, chaotic stint within the meme coin world. Along with his ordinary brash candor, Portnoy described a journey of sudden windfalls, authorized landmines, and the form of public backlash which may make even probably the most hardened web provocateur assume twice.
“I love the rush, I’m a gambler at heart,” he admitted. “But then the smart part of me is like, is it 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%” good points, purchased in, made a video mocking its lack of actual worth — and acquired sued anyway.
“They basically said SafeMoon paid me to promote them. Total lie. Cost me $20k to get out of the lawsuit.” he mentioned.
Undeterred, he pushed additional. Impressed by the concept of launching a Barstool coin and skipping the trouble of going public, Portnoy started researching how meme cash are made. That led him to a developer who pitched a token known as Libra, allegedly backed by the president of Argentina.
Portnoy purchased $4.5 million value.
“I was at SNL with Lady Gaga. I was just typing. I’m like, what the hell is going on here?” he mentioned. The developer had advised him Elon Musk would tweet about it. As an alternative, the president disavowed any involvement. “I lost all my money.”
Portnoy says he acquired fortunate — the developer later reimbursed him in full, although he isn’t certain why. “I’m one of the lucky ones, but you know, I’m not going to not take that money back.”
Regardless of the losses, Portnoy saved dabbling. He launched cash known 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 kind of money at Barstool,” he mentioned.
However what goes up nearly at all times crashes again down. Portnoy says he’s misplaced monitor of what number of instances 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’s the same group of winners and it’s the same 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 fun and games behind the computer but that reinforces people are losing and making real money, and they’re not always taking responsibility for the risk, even though I think they should.”
Regardless of the cash and the memes, he says the meme coin scene is finally unsustainable.
“I get why people like it,” he mentioned. “It’s a form of gambling, it’s a Ponzi scheme, I don’t mean that in a negative way.”
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 seems to be grim. “I can’t imagine it’s here to stay. I think it’s here to stay for the next four years. What happens after that? I don’t know.”
