"I intend to show nerves of steel and hold my positions without locking in the loss," Dave Portnoy told followers as he declared he will not sell his Bitcoin or XRP holdings despite sitting on millions of dollars in unrealized losses and having depleted his free cash.
Portnoy said he owns "a ton of Bitcoin and a substantial amount of XRP," and that he has continued buying during the market’s slide. He told listeners he bought XRP earlier this year at about $1.70 per token, opening that position near a local peak in late January 2026, and noted XRP had fallen to $1.17 at the time of his remarks while Bitcoin was holding near $63,000.
The blunt arithmetic underlines the headline: Portnoy publicly admits multimillion-dollar paper losses and says his available cash is effectively gone because he kept buying. Still, he framed the sell-off as a buying opportunity, calling it "the current crash an excellent sale" and warning that "only those players who, unlike him, still have dry powder left will be able to take advantage of it."
That combination — active buying amid sharp losses and no spare cash left to add — is what gives the stance its force. Portnoy has been a visible retail investor before, including a high-profile trading partnership with Crypto Cobain in 2020. Now he is presenting himself as a committed holder even while admitting the practical limits of his capacity to do more.
Context matters. The broader market has been hit by a prolonged downturn and heightened volatility driven by regulatory uncertainty, rising interest rates and a retreat in risk appetite. Institutions and funds have been adjusting balance sheets; one participant, Strategy, sold 32 BTC from its reserve for the first time in three years to pay dividends — a move observers point to as emblematic of current pressure on crypto holders.
Portnoy tied his decision to conviction as much as calculation. He said Jack Dorsey personally convinced him that Bitcoin could eventually reach $1 million, and he used that long-term view to justify riding out the current losses. His declared intent is simple: do not crystallize the paper losses now and wait for the market to recover.
Still, the account he gave contains an unresolved squeeze. He says he has been buying during the decline but also that his "free cash has been completely exhausted during the decline." That leaves his public posture — doubling down by choice — sitting next to a practical constraint — no dry powder left to buy more if prices keep falling. It is an unusual position for someone urging others to see the crash as opportunity: he cannot, by his own admission, meaningfully act on that opportunity any longer.
Portnoy’s statement matters because he is not an anonymous retail investor; his audience watches his moves. His refusal to sell could encourage followers to hold through pain, or at least to slow panic selling. But the central unanswered question is concrete and narrow: exactly how large are his positions? He has said he owns a lot of both assets and described significant unrealized losses, but he has not disclosed precise holdings.
He says he will hold. He has repeated that he will "show nerves of steel and hold" rather than lock in losses. What will determine whether that resolve changes is not sentiment but scale: the undisclosed size of his Bitcoin and XRP stakes and whether any future price action forces a different choice. Until Portnoy reveals the numbers, the story of a high-profile retail investor weathering a crypto crash will remain a mix of conviction, vulnerability and a gap only his account can fill.
