Memecoins are ‘Legalized Ponzi Schemes’

They call him “El Presidente.” But unlike the other President, Dave Portnoy draws a line at launching a memecoin. He worries his followers will lose their shirts.

“I got involved in memecoins because I wanted to launch a Barstool memecoin, but I didn’t want my fans and followers to lose money,” he said in an interview with CoinDesk. Memecoins are “legalized Ponzi schemes,” he said, “there’s no value to it, so you gotta get in and get out before it crashes.” [Note: memecoins aren’t legalized in the U.S. but they are popular.]

While Portnoy hasn’t launched a Barstool branded memecoin, he has launched other memecoins. In February he launched GREED, a token that reached a market cap of $41.5 million. According to Lookonchain, Portnoy bought 357.92M $GREED, totalling 35.79% of the total supply, then sold all in a single transaction causing the price to crash. He made around $258,000.

The Barstool Sports founder took to X in the aftermath to say, “I warned people I could sell. I could have cashed out +1 million. I let it drop 75% before cashing out. Lots of people made money. I took profits + poured it into #jailstool which I can’t touch. I didn’t make a dime on it. Some people won. Some lost. Only the losers keep bitching.”

Portnoy started trading stocks during the COVID-19 pandemic, and even launched the YouTube channel Davey Day Trader, where fans could follow his trades. His trades weren’t always successful, and there wasn’t always a clear strategy, but they were entertaining. At one point, he pulled letters out of a Scrabble bag, put RTX (Raytheon Technologies Corporation) together, and put $200,000 into the stock.

It was around this time that Portnoy was introduced to bitcoin. “I don’t think you can be involved in anything, stock market [or] finance without crypto being a major part of it,” he says now. He has a love/hate relationship with bitcoin because he says he’s “been on the wrong side of it every time it rips.” Over the years he’s also experimented with investing in cryptocurrencies like XRP.

Although Portnoy got into memecoins because he wanted to launch one for the Barstool community, he admits that he still doesn’t understand how to implement blockchain technology or cryptocurrencies into his business model. Barstool once accepted bitcoin as part of its Barstool Fund to help small businesses, but out of $50 million raised, he said only $30,000 came from bitcoin.

“They talked big, big talk, but it didn’t work out,” he said, reflecting on the bitcoin community who persuaded him to accept the cryptocurrency. “Crypto is the league leader in people telling you what [you] should be doing, and it’s also the league leader in people I don’t trust.”

Portnoy has experimented with memecoins, bitcoin, and even launched an NFT attached to his popular One Bite Pizza Reviews YouTube channel that sold for $138,000. And, although he doesn’t always understand them, he says “as much as I have back and forth with the crypto community, I actually love them. I think they’re hilarious […] an interesting group, which I guess I’m a part of.”

Dave Portnoy will be sharing more about his crypto journey at Consensus 2025 in Toronto on May 15. Get your tickets here.