Barstool Sports’ Dave Portnoy sells his Bitcoin, calls Link Marines ‘weak’

Barstool Sports president Dave Portnoy had a whirlwind couple of weeks in the crypto space, amassing more than $1 million in Bitcoin (according to his claims), collaborating with Gemini’s Winklevoss twins, and pushing coins like Chainlink and Orchid.

But the outspoken investor has apparently pulled out of cryptocurrency after a rough week across the market, including a nearly 30% tank for Chainlink after he came out in support as one of the infamous Link Marines.

“I currently own zero bitcoins,” Portnoy tweeted this afternoon. “I will wait and watch. I lost 25k. Just like with the stock market it took my brain time to figure it out. I know this. The Link Marines are weak and the orchid flowers do die in the crypto world. I may or may not be done. #bitcoin”

It’s a sharp reversal from earlier this week. On Monday, he boasted on his daily “Davey Day Trader” stream that he was up more than $100,000 on his seven-figure Bitcoin investment after a week, and that he owned at least $300,000 of Chainlink—enough, he said, to call himself a Link Marine.

“I am a Link Marine, I fuckin’ love it,” he said on the stream. “I’m a huge Link Marine. I think I’m $300,000 of one and that thing just rips.”

But Portnoy’s brash tactics might have rubbed the crypto faithful the wrong way. On Monday, he repeatedly prodded viewers to purchase Orchid Protocol’s OXT token, which has seen volatile movement of late, and encouraged them to pump and dump the token. Since Monday, OXT’s price is down by about one-third.

“It’s like a fucking little wimpy coin, and we’re gonna push OXT to the fuckin’ moon.. that’s a little cheap-ass Bitcoin,” he said. “Go buy OXT. Get in on it, and then get out on it. Let’s fuckin’ pump and dump it.”

We’ve seen similar results with LINK. As Decrypt detailed earlier today, the coin’s price is down nearly 30% this week after soaring nearly 1000% from the start of 2020. It’s still up significantly on the year, but anyone who... say, sunk $300,000 in it just recently is bound to feel a bit stung.

Portnoy, who has only expanded his vast online following via the Davey Day Trader streams this year, said on Monday that while he doesn’t pump and dump traditional stocks due to SEC oversight, he felt no shame about doing it with cryptocurrency—and telling his viewers to do much the same.

“The thing I like about pump-and-dumps in crypto is it’s encouraged,” he said. “In crypto, you can pump and dump all day long.”

Eight of the 10 most-capitalized coins are down over the last week, according to CoinGecko, so it’s hard to say how significant Portnoy’s influence has been on recent prices of the coins he has promoted. But his aggressive strategies seemed to backfire in the short term, at least, and we’ll see whether his fans are as receptive the next time around should he reinvest in crypto.