Barstool Sports’ Dave Portnoy Offers to ‘Save Bitcoin’

El Presidente continues to taunt the Bitcoiners. 

After purportedly buying $1.25 million of the world’s most popular crypto and dumping it days later, much to the dismay of Bitcoiners who would have preferred him to “hodl,” Barstool Sports’ Dave Portnoy now says he will save Bitcoin—but only if Bitcoiners are civil toward him. 

“I will save bitcoin if they ask me nicely,” he said today in a tweet that has so far garnered thousands of likes and hundreds of retweets. 

Noted gold bug and Bitcoin hater Peter Schiff happily took the bait, tweeting that “Bitcoin is beyond saving.” 

“Why jump on a sinking ship, or encourage others to do so? You did right by cutting your losses,” tweeteth Schiff.

By saying he will “save bitcoin,” presumably, Portnoy means to get the price headed back in the right direction. He claimed to have bought Bitcoin on August 13, when it was around $11,755. The price climbed to over $12,000 four days later, before starting to sink. Today, bitcoin is at $11,300.

The self-described “Baron of Bitcoin” also hinted at saving chainlink (LINK)—another crypto he claimed to have sunk money into before selling it off shortly after. 

“Is it time to save the #Linkmarines?” Portnoy tweeted along with a video of a soldier rushing in to save his comrades—his trademarked smirking face pasted onto the hero soldier. 

And then, he tweeted a poll to his legions of followers asking them to decide if he should save the Link marines or let them perish. (Most responded that he should let them perish.)

Unrequited love? 

Did Portnoy help inflate the price of Bitcoin by drawing attention to the asset? Did the price drop because he got out of it? Is he pumping and dumping? Who knows.

But in many ways, though, he is a cool mistress. While Bitcoiners love the celebrity attention because it draws more investors—and hopefully more real cash into Bitcoin—when it comes to the crypto world, Portnoy acts like he could take it or leave it.

The problem is, he doesn’t leave it completely. Instead, he keeps the Bitcoiners hanging on by doling out small bits of hope that he’ll return in full force. Even after he sold Bitcoin, for example, he said he still had his cash on Gemini. 

“The sexual tension between Dave and bitcoin has never been more real,” the official account for crypto trading platform El Toro US  tweeted Tuesday. 

The excitement began two weeks ago when Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss dropped by Portnoy’s summer home in Nantucket to give him a few pointers on how to invest in crypto via the twin’s Gemini exchange.  

But as of Friday, he told his 1.7 million Twitter followers, he was “out of bitcoin” and sticking with stocks, because stocks “continue to always go up.” 

Bitcoiners are upset because Portnoy is not hanging on to his crypto assets in the hopes the market will climb ever upward. Instead, he jumped out of the market as soon as the price faltered, with many criticizing him for having “weak hands,” among other things.

“Dave lacks the testicular fortitude it takes for Digital Assets,” one Bitcoiner complained.