Dave Portnoy Claims Meme Coins Are Just ‘Gambling’ and Not Sustainable Long-Term
“I don’t think it’s here to stay,” Dave Portnoy said, referring to meme coins—the same corner of crypto he’s often fueled 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 brief, chaotic stint in the meme coin world. With his usual bluntness, Portnoy described a journey of sudden gains, legal challenges, and public backlash that might give even the most hardened provocateur pause. “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 conversation was part of a broader discussion about crypto’s culture of speculation and hype, where meme coins — tokens created more for amusement than utility — 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 fervor.
It started with SafeMoon, one of the earliest viral tokens of the COVID-era crypto boom. Portnoy saw posts about traders achieving “9,000,000,000%” gains, bought in, made a video mocking its lack of real value — and got sued regardless. “They basically said SafeMoon paid me to promote them. Total lie. Cost me $20k to get out of the lawsuit,” he stated. Undeterred, he continued. Inspired by the idea of launching a Barstool coin and avoiding the hassle of going public, Portnoy began researching how meme coins are made. That led him to a developer who presented a token called Libra, allegedly backed by the president of Argentina. Portnoy invested $4.5 million. “I was at SNL with Lady Gaga. I was just typing. I’m like, what the hell is going on here?” he recalled. The developer had promised that Elon Musk would tweet about it. Instead, the president distanced himself from any involvement. “I lost all my money.”
Portnoy says he got lucky — the developer later reimbursed him in full, though he isn’t sure why. “I’m one of the lucky ones, but you know, I’m not going to not take that money back.” Despite the losses, Portnoy kept experimenting. He launched coins called Greed and Greed 2, leaning into the satire. Another coin, JailStool, emerged from public outrage at his meme coin endeavors. Someone else created the token, but Portnoy embraced the name and shared about it. At one point, he claims, a $1,000 investment soared to $7 million — within an hour. “It took me 13 years to make that kind of money at Barstool,” he said.
But what goes up almost always crashes back down. Portnoy says he’s lost track of how many times he’s been accused of “rug pulls,” a term for when insiders sell off a coin and leave latecomers with worthless tokens. 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. “It’s the same group of winners and it’s the same group of losers.”
That realization seems to have changed his perspective. While he teased the potential launch of Greed 3, he admitted the backlash is harder to bear in real life. One man confronted him in a Las Vegas casino, claiming he lost $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.”
Despite the money and the memes, he asserts the meme coin scene is ultimately unsustainable. “I get why people like it,” he said. “It’s a form of gambling, it’s a Ponzi scheme — I don’t mean that negatively.” Portnoy doesn’t claim to have all the answers. But if he’s a barometer for where meme coin mania might be heading, the outlook seems bleak. “I can’t imagine it’s here to stay. I think it’s here for the next four years. What happens after that? I don’t know.”
