When has Dave Portnoy been known to play it safe? And he doesn’t plan to start now.
At Consensus 2025, the Barstool Sports founder cracked open the chaotic world of meme coins with Bullish CEO Tom Farley, offering a raw, unfiltered take on the highs, crashes, and sheer absurdity of crypto’s most “unhinged” corner.
And true to form, Portnoy didn’t hold back. “I don’t think it’s here to stay,” he said about meme coins – despite being one of their loudest cheerleaders during peak mania.
Why the U-turn? Let’s understand his stance.
A Flurry of Chaos and Lawsuits
Portnoy’s meme coin saga began, unsurprisingly, with FOMO. Hooked by viral claims of “9,000,000,000%” gains, he jumped into SafeMoon and made a video mocking its lack of fundamentals – only to get hit with a lawsuit.
“They basically said SafeMoon paid me to promote them. Total lie. Cost me $20k to get out of the lawsuit.”
Instead of backing off, he doubled down.
Then,there was the wild $4.5 million bet on a token called Libra, supposedly backed by Argentina’s president.
“I was at SNL with Lady Gaga. I was just typing. I’m like, what the hell is going on here?” he recalled.
He lost everything – until, bizarrely, the dev returned the funds. “I’m one of the lucky ones.”
The Greed Coin Experiments (Yes, There Was a Greed 2)
Portnoy leaned into the absurdity. He launched Greed and Greed 2, while others capitalized on the chaos with JailStool – a satire token born from public outrage. Portnoy embraced that one too.
In one wild swing, he claims a $1,000 meme coin buy turned into $7 million in an hour. “It took me 13 years to make that kind of money at Barstool,” he said.
But reality hits hard. In Vegas, an angry man confronted him for losing $200,000. That stuck. “It’s all fun and games behind the computer… but people are losing and making real money.”
Why He’s Betting on XRP Now
Dave Portnoy is leaning into XRP now. Speaking at Consensus 2025, he admitted that his interest in the token has less to do with fundamentals and more with the thrill of catching a potential breakout asset.
“I don’t know if there’s as much FOMO in Bitcoin now; it’s so established. But that’s why I’m in XRP. It’s FOMO,” he said. “It’s just $2.40. What if that’s the next Bitcoin?”
Portnoy made it clear: he’s not making a technical argument for XRP. It’s the price point, underdog energy, and the possibility of repeating Bitcoin’s trajectory that pulled him in.
According to him, XRP still feels like one of the few tokens left that can spark real retail hype – especially now that Bitcoin has crossed into the $2 trillion market cap.
Meme Coins: Easy to Mock, Harder to Understand
Meme coins might be the most hated – and misunderstood – corner of crypto. They get written off as scams, jokes, or hype-driven noise. Yes, there are plenty of rug pulls and zero-utility tokens floating around. But lumping all meme coins into that category misses the bigger picture.
At the heart of it, meme coins are just a reflection of how financial markets actually work: speculation, hype, community, and a bit of chaos.
They’re not pretending to be tech revolutions – and that’s kind of the point. Tokens like Dogecoin and Shiba Inu started off as jokes but have grown into full-blown ecosystems with massive followings and actual use cases.
The harshest critics often overlook their own role in the dynamic. Many people jump into meme coins expecting life-changing gains overnight. When that doesn’t happen, the coin gets blamed instead of the lack of a real investment strategy.
What does that say about market sentiment? Some food for thought.
