BTC drawdown math: Portnoy’s $100K entry now ~50% underwater near $62.5K, vows no exit
Bitcoin's slide from $126K to $62,527 leaves a widely cited $100K entry deep in the red — the holder says he won't sell into it.
Bitcoin printed above $126,000 in October last year before sliding to roughly $63,000, with CoinDesk’s tracker showing the pair near $62,527 at the time of the latest commentary from Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy. That range implies a peak-to-trough drawdown of close to 50%, and puts any position opened near the $100,000 level solidly underwater on a mark-to-market basis.
The entry, the drawdown, the stated response
Portnoy has confirmed he bought bitcoin near $100,000 and is now sitting on a significant unrealized loss at current spot levels. Speaking with Fox Business host Stuart Varney on Varney & Co. this week, as reported by CoinDesk, he stated his intended response to the drawdown rather than a plan to reduce exposure.
“I’m holding. I’ll hold this thing down to zero,” Portnoy said. “I know if I sell it, it’s going to go nuclear again. I’d rather go down with the ship this time.” No figure for the size of the position has been disclosed publicly, so the dollar magnitude of the unrealized loss cannot be verified independently — only the entry level and the current price gap.
A self-reported pattern of inverted timing
Portnoy characterized his own trade history as consistently mistimed on both sides of the cycle. “Yeah, I got regrets. I bought the thing at $100,000. 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,” he told Varney, per CoinDesk’s account.
That self-assessment lines up with the observable price path: a run to above $126,000 in October followed by a roughly 50% retracement to the low-$60,000s. It’s the kind of round-trip that has repeatedly punished traders who chase tops and capitulate near bottoms, a dynamic CoinDesk’s own coverage frames as a recurring feature of retail — and at times professional — positioning in this asset class.
What the stance signals for flow-watchers
A public commitment to hold through a drawdown to zero, rather than de-risk, removes one identifiable seller from the order book at current levels — though the position’s actual size is unknown and its market impact therefore unquantifiable. Whether this buy-and-hold stance outperforms active timing over the next cycle remains an open question that only forward price action will answer.
Separately, at Consensus 2025, Portnoy argued the memecoin sector is structurally unsustainable, according to CoinDesk.
Read more: Bitcoin’s Split From Record Stocks Is Temporary, Say Schwab and Hashdex