Barstool Sports Boss Baits Bitcoiners In Front of 1.7m Followers

Tim Alper
Last updated: | 1 min read

Another day, another would-be bitcoin (BTC) troll (or a new investor): A Twitter storm is brewing online after Dave Portnoy, the man behind the popular Barstool Sports pop culture blog, decided to take a tongue-in-cheek swipe at the crypto community – following on from a similar tirade from Harry Potter author JK Rowling in May this year.

Dave Portnoy. Source: a video screenshot, Youtube

Portnoy has been regaling his 1.7 million Twitter followers and 750,000 Facebook fans with short videos entitled “Davey Day Trader Global (DDTG).” These mainly consist of joke-laden, irony-heavy rants about crypto, bitcoin and some of the scene’s most prominent players, including Gemini exchange co-founders the Winklevoss twins.

He compared BTC investment to playing Pokémon GO, and asked if he could “mine it with a green hammer.”

In one video, Portnoy claimed that he had “spent USD 20k on bitcoin back in the original bitcoin age,” but confessed that he “doesn’t know where it is now.”

He quipped,

“There are probably little teenage boys running about with my bitcoin right now.”

He called the Winklevoss brothers “rowing robots,” and asked them to come to his office in their “little f**ing row outfits” to explain BTC to him.

The twins decided to rise to the challenge, replying to Portnoy’s jibe “Let’s do it. Let buy all the bitcoins” with a tweet that read, “Invitation accepted.”

This earned a few raised eyebrows online.

True to form, Twitter has erupted with feverish crypto activity. Everyone from scammers to hardcore crypto evangelists have turned up with responses, hawking every sort of coin and exchange platform you care to name – and many you probably wouldn’t.

Portnoy is clearly enjoying himself, returning to Twitter for more crypto community-baiting efforts like this:

Some Twitter users decided to look on the light side.

Others opined that the Barstool Sports chief might one day change his (mocking) tune.

Some decided to put a philosophical slant on Portnoy’s posts.

And, of course, there were a few (joking?) conspiracy theorists on hand.

Others still argued that Portnoy’s rants (inadvertently) contained a few valuable lessons.

But in many cases, crypto tweeters were just plain unimpressed.