Dave Portnoy Buys Into Crypto Mania

For those of you who are not familiar, Dave Portnoy is the eccentric founder of Barstool Sports, and has recently pivoted to trading options as both a form of revenue generation and entertainment. At first, this seemed like merely a fun gimmick to entertain his fans while sports are on hiatus due to COVID-19, but “Davey Day-Trader” became something much more. He made it look easy to make money trading options, and these quick profits during this year’s bull market allowed him to gather an army of “Stoolies” to download Robinhood and start buying calls.

Now, it is definitely worth noting that Portnoy had been incredibly unsuccessful trading options until about June of this year when he began to ride the wave of profits that are coming with the stock market’s historic bull run. And although “Davey Day Trader” likes to wax poetic about how he is leading an army of amateur traders into an industry historically dominated by institutions, the reality is that Dave looks out for himself first and uses his army of followers as a way to pump when it is in his interest. He even was facing a potential SEC investigation over the pumping of penny stock $NSPR (see tweet below).

This may seem like a controversial opinion, as it is not necessarily possible to prove that he was directly influencing the price of stocks by advocating them on his platform; however, Dave’s meeting with the Winklevoss twins last week opened his eyes to a whole new world of profits while also unintentionally making his self-serving attitude even more apparent. At first, he merely asked the ‘Winklevi’ to come onto his show and explain Bitcoin to him in a way that he can understand, and they happily obliged knowing that Dave and his army can bring capital into the space.

However, it quickly became obvious that Dave cared little about the technical aspects of Bitcoin and only wanted to focus on the profits that can be made in the space. That in itself is not a problem, many Bitcoiners have entered the space with the hopes of making profits and have done so handsomely. The problem comes when he uses his army of followers to pump coins with the sole intention of dumping at the top. This is the approach Dave has been taking since his “educational meeting” with the Winklevi, as we have seen him pump several sh*tcoins in the last week. He knows nothing about the technicals of these tokens, and is banking that his followers are equally ignorant and are willing to buy because he says so. In the end, a handful of his followers will make money on these massive pump and dumps, but most will lose their entire investment. Dave has tweeted and subsequently impacted the price of coins by nearly 400%, take Orchid ($OXT) for example.

Portnoy bought into $OXT and tweeted about it, causing a massive spike in price and volume. Does Portnoy know anything about Orchid? Probably not. Does that matter? Definitely not. We cannot be certain how much he made off this trade, but a 390% return on any amount of capital is a good week for your asset. Crypto veterans are warning traders to be wary, because if you play with fire you always run the risk of getting burned; and in this case Portnoy is gasoline that is being added to an already volatile fire. A well-respected technical trader, Satoshi Flipper, had this to say:

Although Portnoy’s profits make the prospect of altcoin trading extremely appealing, it is important to always know what you are getting yourself into. These altcoin projects are very different than the traditional financial assets where Davey Day Trader made his bones, and he will not be able to simply ride the wave of profits from the stock market and federal stimulus like he has in the past. These projects can and do go to zero overnight, and believe me when I tell you that Portnoy will have emptied his bag long before the coin hits zero and his army is left puzzled and broke.