Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy launched his own token via Pump.fun, “rugged” it, then relaunched a sequel token—which has already tanked 97% from its all time high. This comes less than two weeks since he first entered the meme coin trenches, during which he said if he launched his own coin he would not rug pull investors.
When Portnoy first started buying up meme coins, he publicly claimed his wallet, saying that he’s “not trying to be shady.” As a result, crypto degens have closely followed and scrutinized every on-chain move the sports media founder has made. This has included Portnoy buying tokens, posting about them on X, and then dumping them.
“If I launch my own coin, put my name on it. Trust me, I’m going to make sure I don’t get fucking scammed, I’m not going to rug pull, I’m not going to dump. I’m not going to do any of that shit,” Portnoy said less than two weeks ago, in response to public scrutiny. “These are other coins that are already out there.”
Now, it appears that he has launched his own coin, albeit not with his name on it, and has dumped it on investors.
On Tuesday, Portnoy launched GREED with a picture of Michael Douglas’s character Gordon Gekko from the Wall Street films—famous for a monologue claiming that “greed is good.” The token quickly skyrocketed to a $41.5 million market cap, a particularly impressive milestone considering the current market conditions. Along the way, he bought $4,200 worth of the token. Then, once the token had dipped to around $20 million, he added an additional $1,670 to his bag.
“You know who doesn’t dump? Me,” Portnoy said on X Spaces. “I could have made $1 million on GREED in 30 seconds. You know what I tried to do? I tried to burn the fucking supply. But I got too many meme coins in my thing that it kept freezing.”
Half an hour later, Portnoy dumped every single GREED token he had in one transaction. The estimated price of the tokens at the time, according to SolScan, was $270,000. He instantly swapped into JAILSTOOL—a token he had previously endorsed.
In response, GREED dropped 99% in just four seconds from a $12.88 million market cap to $123,950—leading to a barrage of “rug” allegations.
“I’m not going anywhere, I think like this space.” Portnoy said at the end of his X Spaces, before dumping his token. “I think I may even launch a couple coins a day, just for show. I might launch GREED2 in five seconds.“
About 10 minutes after selling his entire GREED bag, he did just that. GREED2, however, was much less successful. It rose to a $7 million market cap before slowly falling 90% over the next five hours. It is worth noting that Portnoy’s doxxed wallet has not sold any GREED2.
Amid the chaos, the original GREED rallied back to $16.75 million before falling back down to $4.88 million. It appears Portnoy started to fear he was missing out, as GREED2 sat at a lower market cap at the time, so he bought back into GREED with $12,270. Just 30 minutes passed before he sold his bag once again for approximately $14,150.
This comes amid what crypto bros are calling “crime season.” Since Donald Trump launched a Solana meme coin days before his inauguration, traders have said that the number of questionable crypto launches has skyrocketed.
Most recently, Hayden Davis—the CEO of Kelsier and one of the creators of the controversial LIBRA token promoted by President of Argentina Javier Milei—has claimed that insider trading is rife within the meme coin space. He said it’s commonplace for teams to snipe their own tokens, and admitted to doing so on projects he has worked on.
Portnoy also received a $5 million refund for his losses on LIBRA via Davis.
After the disastrous LIBRA launch, which has led to President Milei being pressed with fraud charges, Davis has also claimed to have been directly involved in the Melania Trump token. Analytics company Bubblemaps confirmed that the launch teams behind LIBRA and MELANIA are indeed linked via on-chain data.
Despite this, according to prediction market Myriad—which is property of Decrypt’s parent company Dastan—there is just a 15% chance that Davis will be arrested by the end of the week. Adding to the theory that during crime season, anything goes.
Edited by Stacy Elliott.
