“I don’t think it’s here to stay,” Dave Portnoy said, referring to meme – coins – the same corner of crypto that he often poured fuel through his social media.

Speaking on stage in Consensus 2025 with Tom Farley, CEO of Crypto Exchange Bullish, Barstol Sports Founder peeled the layers on his short, chaotic stint in Meme Coin World. With his usual brash luminous, Portnoy described a journey with sudden falls, legal land mines and the kind of public setback that could possibly make even the most hardened internet provocator think twice.

“I love rush, I’m a gambler in my heart,” he admitted. “But then the smart part of me is like, is it worth hating?” The conversation was part of a broader discussion about Crypto’s culture for speculation and hype, where the meme-coin-tokens created more to jokes than utility-have caught the fantasy of young, risk-hungry dealers. Portnoy, who built bar stool in a media empire on viral content and sports games, found itself swept into the same digital fever.

It started with Safemoon, one of the earliest viral tokens in the Covid era crypto-boom. Portnoy saw social media posts about dealers who achieved “9,000,000,000%” winnings bought in, got a video that mocked its lack of real value – and was nevertheless sued.

“They basically said Safemoon paid me to promote them. Total lie. Costs me $ 20,000 to get out of the trial.” he said.

He pushed on effortlessly. Inspired by the idea of ​​launching a bar stool coin and skipping the hassle of becoming public, Portnoy began to investigate how the meme coins are made. That led him to a developer who beat a token called the weight, allegedly supported by the president of Argentina.

Portnoy bought $ 4.5 million worth.

“I was at SNL with Lady Gaga. I just wrote. I’m like what the hell is going on there?” he said. The developer had told him that Elon Musk would tweet about it. Instead, the president rejected any commitment. “I lost all my money.”

Portnoy says he was lucky – the developer refunded him later fully, though he is not sure why. “I’m one of the lucky ones, but you know I don’t want to take back that money.”

Despite the losses, Portnoy continued. He launched coins called greed and greed 2leaning into the satire. Another coin, Jailstool, came out of public indignation at his meme -fermentation experiments. Another created the token, but Portnoy embraced the name and posted about it. At one point he claims that an investment of $ 1,000 ballooned to $ 7 million – within one hour.

“It took me 13 years to make that kind of money at Barstool,” he said.

But what goes up almost always goes down again. Portnoy says he has lost the overview of how many times he has been accused of “carpet drags”, a term for when insiders dump 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 trade in bots and algorithms who know when to end. “It’s the same group of winners and it’s the same group of losers.”

This realization seems to have changed his appetite. While teasing the possible launch of greed 3, he admitted that setbacks are harder to the stomach in real life. A man confronted him in a Las Vegas Casino and claimed he lost $ 200,000. “It’s all fun and games behind the computer, but it reinforces people lose and make real money, and they don’t always take responsibility for the risk, even though I think they should.”

Despite the money and the memes, he says the meme -coin scene is ultimately unsustainable.

“I get why people like it,” he said. “It’s a form of game, it’s a Ponzi scheme, I don’t mean that in a negative way.”

Portnoy does not claim to have the answers. But if he is a Weathervane for where Meme Coin Mania may be on the way, the forecast will look bleak. “I can’t imagine it’s where to stay. I think it’s here to stay for the next four years. What’s going on after that? I don’t know.”