{"id":27060,"date":"2025-05-15T22:31:40","date_gmt":"2025-05-15T22:31:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/?p=27060"},"modified":"2025-05-15T22:31:40","modified_gmt":"2025-05-15T22:31:40","slug":"dave-portnoy-says-meme-coins-are-gambling-and-not-built-to-last","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/?p=27060","title":{"rendered":"Dave Portnoy Says Meme Coins Are ‘Gambling’ and Not Built to Last"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s here to stay,\u201d Dave Portnoy said, referring to meme coins\u2014the same corner of crypto he\u2019s often poured fuel on through his social media antics.<\/p>\n

Speaking on stage at Consensus 2025 with Tom Farley, CEO of crypto exchange Bullish, the Barstool Sports founder peeled back the layers of his short, chaotic stint in the meme coin world. With his usual brash candor, Portnoy described a journey of sudden windfalls, legal landmines, and the kind of public backlash that might make even the most hardened internet provocateur think twice.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love the rush, I\u2019m a gambler at heart,\u201d he admitted. \u201cBut then the smart part of me is like, is it worth the hate?\u201d The conversation was part of a broader discussion about crypto\u2019s culture of speculation and hype, where meme coins \u2014 tokens created more for jokes than utility \u2014 have captured the imagination of young, risk-hungry traders. Portnoy, who built Barstool into a media empire on viral content and sports gambling, found himself swept into the same digital fever.<\/p>\n

It started with SafeMoon, one of the earliest viral tokens of the COVID-era crypto boom. Portnoy saw social media posts about traders making \u201c9,000,000,000%\u201d gains, bought in, made a video mocking its lack of real value \u2014 and got sued anyway.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey basically said SafeMoon paid me to promote them. Total lie. Cost me $20k to get out of the lawsuit.\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Undeterred, he pushed further. Inspired by the idea of launching a Barstool coin and skipping the hassle of going public, Portnoy began researching how meme coins are made. That led him to a developer who pitched a token called Libra, allegedly backed by the president of Argentina.<\/p>\n

Portnoy bought $4.5 million worth.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was at SNL with Lady Gaga. I was just typing. I’m like, what the hell is going on here?\u201d he said. The developer had told him Elon Musk would tweet about it. Instead, the president disavowed any involvement. \u201cI lost all my money.\u201d<\/p>\n

Portnoy says he got lucky \u2014 the developer later reimbursed him in full, though he isn\u2019t sure why. \u201cI’m one of the lucky ones, but you know, I’m not going to not take that money back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the losses, Portnoy kept dabbling. He launched coins called Greed and Greed 2<\/em>, leaning into the satire. Another coin, JailStool, emerged from public outrage at his meme coin experiments. Someone else created the token, but Portnoy embraced the name and posted about it. At one point, he claims, a $1,000 investment ballooned to $7 million \u2014 within an hour.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt took me 13 years to make that kind of money at Barstool,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

But what goes up almost always crashes back down. Portnoy says he\u2019s lost track of how many times he\u2019s been accused of \u201crug pulls,\u201d a term for when insiders dump a coin and leave latecomers with worthless tokens.<\/p>\n

He described meme coins as a rigged game, dominated by a core group of early buyers with trading bots and algorithms who know when to exit. \u201cIt’s the same group of winners and it’s the same group of losers.\u201d<\/p>\n

That realization seems to have changed his appetite. While he teased the possible launch of Greed 3, he admitted the backlash is harder to stomach in real life. One man confronted him in a Las Vegas casino, claiming he lost $200,000. \u201cIt\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the money and the memes, he says the meme coin scene is ultimately unsustainable.<\/p>\n

\u201cI get why people like it,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a form of gambling, it\u2019s a Ponzi scheme, I don\u2019t mean that in a negative way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Portnoy doesn\u2019t claim to have the answers. But if he\u2019s a weathervane for where meme coin mania might be heading, the forecast looks grim. \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s here to stay,\u201d Dave Portnoy said, referring to meme coins\u2014the same corner of crypto he\u2019s often poured fuel on through his social media antics. Speaking on stage at Consensus 2025 with Tom Farley, CEO of crypto exchange Bullish, the Barstool Sports founder peeled back the layers of his short, chaotic stint […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3,4,5],"class_list":["post-27060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-crypto","tag-doge","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27060\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}