(hoto by Tom Briglia/ Getty Images
Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy has pledged his "allegiance" to Safemoon, a new altcoin that launched in March this year — although he's fully upfront about not understanding it.
Portnoy on Monday published a video on Twitter captioned: "I have no idea how this works."
In the opening of the two-and-a-half-minute film, Portnoy asked viewers to guess which coin he invested $40,000 in based on six hats laid out in front of him, representing six altcoins, which he labeled the "new breed of sh*tcoins."
Choices included Dogecoin, Litecoin, Safemoon, Shiba Inu, HOGE and, Australian Safe Shepherd.
But before he chose, Portnoy, who called himself the "baron of bitcoin" in the video, clarified he will never sell his bitcoin holdings.
"I will never waiver in bitcoin. I don't care what Elon Musk says," he said.
"But events in the last couple of days and weeks have made me think I have to get involved in something beyond bitcoin."
The Barstool Sports founder was referring to Musk's surprise reversal on allowing Tesla to accept bitcoin as payment on May 12.
"I'm gonna pick one and I'm gonna become a leader," he said. "I will not sell any in the near future — I will stick with it. I will ride it either to the stratosphere or hell on earth."
Portnoy, in a press conference-style presentation, finally revealed that he chose Safemoon.
"Why? I don't know f**king why, it could be a Ponzi scheme," he said. "I like the word 'moon,' because that's where I want to go."
The video has garnered two million views as of publishing.
Safemoon is up by roughly 300% in the last 30 days, according to CoinGecko. Searches for the cryptocurrency peaked early on April 20, as momentum was meant to be building behind dogecoin's failed "Doge Day."
The coin climbed 26% to $0.00000800 at around 2:10 p.m. ET Tuesday. It currently has a $4.6 billion valuation.
Safemoon is a decentralized finance token that has the tagline "Safemoon to the Moon" according to its website, a similar slogan trumpeted by dogecoin fans. "To the moon" has been spouted by celebrities including Musk.
Unlike others, however, Safemoon encourages investors to hold. On its website, it said holders will earn passive rewards through "static reflection."
This means the team behind Safemoon plans to make the reward dependent on the volume of the token being traded. Safemoon in fact charges those selling it a 10% exit fee and distributes half that fee to other holders.
Despite this, many remain cautious about the rapid rise of Safemoon, as well as other altcoins. To date, there are about 6,000 cryptocurrencies in circulation, according to CoinGecko.
"Many view it as a pump-and-dump coin," Edward Moya, senior market analyst at currency platform Oanda, told Insider. "Safemoon's initial buzz started off as many anticipated it will have a similar rise like dogecoin. It seems unlikely Safemoon will ever make it to the moon."
Portnoy continued to tweet throughout the day about his Safemoon investment, following it up with another video that reiterated his stance.
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