They refer to him as “El Presidente,” but Dave Portnoy has made it clear he won’t be launching a memecoin, fearing financial losses among his supporters.

“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 stated in a CoinDesk interview. Memecoins, he believes, are simply “legalized Ponzi schemes” lacking any substantial value, hence it’s crucial to enter and exit swiftly before their collapse.

Note: While memecoins are not legal in the U.S., their popularity is undeniable.

Portnoy has not introduced a Barstool-branded memecoin but has been involved with others. For instance, he launched GREED in February, which achieved a market cap of $41.5 million. Notably, he acquired 357.92 million $GREED—35.79% of its total supply—and sold it all in a single transaction, which triggered a price drop, netting him approximately $258,000.

Post-sale, Portnoy addressed his followers on X, stating, “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.”

His journey with stock trading began during the COVID-19 pandemic, where he created the YouTube channel “Davey Day Trader” for fans to track his trades, which varied in success and strategy, once even involving letters drawn from a Scrabble bag.

Portnoy’s entry into cryptocurrency started with Bitcoin. He remarked, “I don’t think you can be involved in anything, stock market [or] finance without crypto being a major part of it.” He admitted his relationship with Bitcoin is complicated since he feels he’s frequently made poor predictions regarding its price movements. Additionally, he has dabbled in cryptocurrencies like XRP.

Despite his initial intention of launching a memecoin for the Barstool community, Portnoy confesses a lack of understanding about incorporating blockchain technology or cryptocurrencies into his business. Although Barstool once accepted Bitcoin for its fund benefiting small businesses, only $30,000 of the $50 million raised came from Bitcoin.

“They talked big, big talk, but it didn’t work out,” he reflected on the Bitcoin community’s advice to integrate 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 tried out various memecoins, experimented with Bitcoin, and even launched an NFT tied to his popular One Bite Pizza Reviews YouTube channel that fetched $138,000. Nonetheless, despite the challenges he faces in understanding this landscape, he expressed admiration for the crypto community: “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 discuss more about his cryptocurrency experiences at Consensus 2025 in Toronto on May 15. Get your tickets here.