Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy has publicly reaffirmed his bullish stance on XRP and bitcoin even as the crypto market undergoes a sharp sell-off. Rather than framing his recent purchases as a short-term bet on an immediate rebound, Portnoy presented them as part of a broader strategy: buying into weakness when fear dominates market sentiment.
His comments came during a period of heavy pressure across digital assets, with XRP sliding significantly alongside the broader market. Even so, Portnoy made clear that he sees falling prices as an opportunity to accumulate, not a reason to step back.
Buying into fear
Portnoy wrote on X that crypto was crashing but that he was still buying. In a related video, he expanded on that view, saying that when there is “blood in the streets,” that is when he prefers to buy. The message was less about calling a precise bottom and more about maintaining conviction during periods of extreme volatility.
According to Portnoy, he used the Kraken app to purchase about $1 million worth of XRP at around $1.79. That position added to a prior $1 million XRP investment he said he made in November of last year. He also disclosed buying approximately $500,000 worth of bitcoin at roughly $82,000 during the same downturn.
These disclosures quickly drew attention because they came in the middle of a broad market decline, when many traders were focused on downside risks rather than fresh allocations. Portnoy’s stance stood out for its simplicity: prices were falling, but his response was to keep buying rather than reduce exposure.
Willing to keep adding even after losses
Portnoy did not try to suggest that his timing was immediately profitable. In fact, he acknowledged that XRP moved lower soon after his purchase. He said the token dropped from around $1.79 to roughly $1.74 after he bought, a move he admitted he did not love. But instead of treating the decline as a warning sign, he described it as normal volatility and reiterated that additional weakness would not change his plan.
His most direct comment captured that mindset clearly: if XRP keeps falling, he said, he will keep buying. That statement is important because it shows his thesis is not built around a near-term bounce. Instead, it reflects a classic contrarian approach in which severe drawdowns are viewed as entry points for accumulation.
At the time referenced in the source report, XRP was trading near $1.43, down about 10% on the day and roughly 23% over the past week. Those figures underscored how aggressive the sell-off had become. For market participants, the bigger story was not simply that prices had fallen, but that fear had become widespread across the crypto sector.
XRP market stress versus institutional positioning
Despite the steep decline in price, the institutional picture around XRP appeared more nuanced than the retail panic suggested. The report noted that U.S. spot XRP ETFs had stabilized with a combined net asset value of $1.11 billion. That stabilization followed a record $93 million outflow in late January, indicating that the product category had absorbed a major shock and then regained some footing.
In addition, recent daily inflows into the Bitwise XRP ETF and Franklin’s XRPZ suggested that at least some institutional investors were not treating XRP as merely a high-beta extension of bitcoin. Instead, they appeared to be evaluating it through a more specific lens tied to its role in cross-border payments and broader payment infrastructure.
This matters because XRP has often traded in sympathy with the wider crypto market, especially during periods of macro stress or bitcoin-led liquidations. Yet ETF flow trends can reveal whether longer-term investors are beginning to separate short-term price volatility from what they see as the asset’s structural utility. While that does not eliminate market risk, it can shape how investors interpret weakness during a sell-off.
Ripple’s business expansion remains part of the story
Beyond market pricing, Ripple’s continued expansion also remains relevant to the investment narrative around XRP. According to the source material, Ripple has secured a full Electronic Money Institution license in Luxembourg. That approval enables the company to provide payment services and issue electronic money across the European Union, a meaningful step in strengthening its regulated footprint in a major economic region.
The company also disclosed the tokenization of $280 million in certified diamonds from the UAE on the XRP Ledger. The development highlights Ripple’s effort to position its ecosystem more deeply in the real-world asset tokenization trend, where blockchain networks are increasingly being used to represent traditional assets in digital form.
At the same time, Ripple Prime added support for the decentralized derivatives protocol Hyperliquid. That move expands on-chain liquidity options available to institutional clients and aligns with a broader strategy of making XRP-related infrastructure more attractive for enterprise use and capital-markets activity.
Taken together, these developments suggest that the XRP story is not being driven solely by speculative trading. While market volatility remains intense, Ripple’s licensing, tokenization initiatives, and institutional product integrations continue to shape how some investors assess the asset over a longer horizon.
What Portnoy’s move signals
Portnoy’s latest purchases do not prove that the market has bottomed, nor do they guarantee that XRP or bitcoin will recover quickly. What they do show is a high-profile investor leaning into a contrarian playbook at a time when sentiment is weak. He is openly accepting near-term downside in exchange for the chance to build positions during a sell-off.
For traders and investors watching XRP, the contrast is striking. On one side is a token that has suffered a sharp weekly decline and remains exposed to broad crypto volatility. On the other is a backdrop in which ETF assets have stabilized, selective inflows have reappeared, and Ripple continues to expand its regulatory and institutional reach.
That combination helps explain why Portnoy’s comments gained traction. His message was not that the market had already turned. It was that heavy selling and fear, in his view, are conditions for accumulation. Whether that approach proves timely will depend on how the broader crypto market evolves, but for now, his stance is unambiguous: during the crash, he is still buying.