One person who has been front and center during the GameStop stock trading frenzy field by Reddit is Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy. He’s been on multiple television shows ripping the trading app Robinhood for limiting or stopping the trading of GameStop, and other “meme stocks” when things were their most intense, and now it has become evident why Portnoy would be so angry.
He tweeted a message that he personally lost almost a million dollars. “I have officially sold all my meme stocks,” he said on Twitter. “I lost $700k is. Vlad and company stole it from me and should be in jail.”
He’s referring to the CEO of Robinhood, Vlad Tenev, who prevented users from trading the stocks at one point. What has fueled the anger of so many others is the fact that Robinhood raised over $3 billion in emergency funding to compensate them during the surge in its trading platform. Tenev has said the company was justified doing it because of “liquidity issues,” but there could be irreparable harm done to the trust Robinhood had built up with clients over the year.
Portnoy had gotten into a heated Twitter feud with New York Mets owner, and hedge fund owner Steve Cohen, who was one of the investors that put over a billion dollars into Robinhood to help keep them afloat. Portnoy even became an ally of Re. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has been calling for hearings to discuss Robinhood’s actions.
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