Dave Portnoy, founder of Barstool Sports, appeared on Fox Business’s Varney & Co. on July 5 to confirm he bought Bitcoin at approximately $100,000 and is currently sitting on millions of dollars in unrealized losses.
This is not simply a retail investor venting frustration. It is a behavioral finance case study playing out in public: Portnoy’s “hold to zero” commitment is driven not by conviction in Bitcoin’s fundamentals but by the anticipatory regret of having sold before prior rebounds, a distinction that matters when assessing what his posture actually signals about retail crypto sentiment at this stage of the cycle.
Portnoy’s Bitcoin Losses and the Pattern Behind Them
Portnoy said on Varney & Co. that his track record with BTC timing is systematically inverted. “There’s nothing I’ve been wrong about more than Bitcoin. Every time I sell it, it goes nuclear. Every time I buy it, it tanks,”
Portnoy said. His current entry near $100,000 came close to the cycle’s local top: BTC peaked above $126,000 in October 2025 before retracing roughly 50 percent to its current level.
Photo: Dave Portnoy
His exact BTC holdings are not publicly disclosed, but Portnoy has previously acknowledged holding around $15 million worth of Bitcoin at prior peaks and described being “down millions” across the position.
Beyond Bitcoin, he also holds XRP, having purchased approximately $1 million of the token during a recent selloff he characterized as “blood in the streets”, and has since stated he will not sell that position either, per reporting by U.Today.
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The Hold-to-Zero Logic and What the On-Chain Record Suggests
Portnoy’s stated rationale for refusing to sell is explicitly regret-driven rather than thesis-driven. “I know if I sell it, it’s going to go nuclear again. I’d rather go down with the ship this time,” he said.
That framing positions his BTC hold as a loss-aversion trade against his own behavioral history rather than a structured view on supply dynamics, the halving cycle, or institutional flow.
The broader crypto market context is relevant here. Bitcoin has registered more than 472 documented “death calls” across prior cycles and recovered from each, a data point that supports the structural case for holding through drawdowns, though it does not, on its own, validate any specific entry price.
Source: BTCUSD / Tradingview
Portnoy’s $100,000 cost basis sits meaningfully above the 200-week simple moving average, a level that has historically functioned as a long-cycle accumulation signal during prior capitulation zones.
Portnoy has also previously floated deploying $5 million to $10 million of Barstool Sports’ corporate funds into BTC if the price revisits the $40,000 range, per an earlier video statement he made public. That threshold has not been reached, but it establishes a conditional buying level that would generate scrutiny of Barstool’s treasury management if triggered.
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Retail Sentiment: What Portnoy’s Public Position Actually Reflects
Portnoy functions as an unusually transparent retail sentiment indicator precisely because he narrates his decision-making in real time, on record, across mainstream financial media.
His pattern, buying near local tops, selling before rallies, then re-entering higher, maps closely onto the documented behavior of high-frequency retail participants in volatile asset classes.
We suspect his “hold to zero” commitment will hold only as long as drawdowns remain within a range he has explicitly cited as non-material to his net worth in prior interviews with Anthony Pompliano. Whether that threshold is tested depends on Bitcoin’s trajectory through the remainder of the current cycle, a question the on-chain data has not yet resolved.
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Neil is a professional cryptocurrency content writer with years of experience. He has written for various cryptocurrency websites to report on breaking news, and been hired by all sorts of cryptocurrency projects, to create content that would increase their exposure and attract more potential investors.
