According to data from CryptoCompare, most of yesterday (August 13), Bitcoin was hovering around the $11,500 level. However, around 19:30 UTC (or 15:30 Eastern Time), Bitcoin started rallying, and within roughly 4.5 hours, Bitcoin managed to get above the $11,800 level.

So, what happened at 19:30 UTC on August 13?

Although we can’t be certain why Bitcoin started rallying at this time, it is interesting to note that it was at this time that Dave Portnoy, the founder and president of Barstool Sports, sent out a tweet with an attached video that showed him buying Bitcoin (BTC) and Chainlink (LINK) with the help of the Winklevoss twins—the co-founders of crypto exchange Gemini—who had accepted Portnoy’s invitation and come to his house to explain Bitcoin to him and show him how to buy crypto:

Portnoy starts the video by saying that he has deposited $250,000 into his Gemini account.

Although we can’t see the screen of Portnoy’s laptop, it does appear from the conversation he is having in the video that he invested 80% of his $250K in Bitcoin and 20% in Chainlink’s native token LINK.

What makes Portnoy’s interest in Bitcoin significant is that he is the the leader of an army of day traders on U.S. trading platform Robinhood and that his promotion of Bitcoin could help to increase the adoption of Bitcoin by his over 1.7 million Twitter followers, many of whom are U.S. millennials.

Prominet macroeconomist and crypto analyst Alex Krüger commented on the “Portnoy Effect” on the Bitcoin price:

“DonAlt”, who is another popular crypto analyst/trader on Twitter, offered the following technical analysis of Bitcoin’s latest price action:

Charles Edwards, Co-Founder of digital asset management firm Capriole Investments, sent out a tweet that listed several reasons to be bullish on Bitcoin:

It is worth pointing out that if there was a “Portnoy Effect” that helped with Bitcoin’s rally, Chainlink’s LINK token did not experience any kind of price appreciation, perhaps because the LINK price had already gone up so much in the past two weeks.

However, Portnoy’s investment in LINK should help it gain even further attention. For example, here is Tyler Winklevoss, the CEO of Gemini, tweeting about the fact that Portnoy is now a LINK “marine” (i.e. LINK HODLer):

The views and opinions expressed by the author are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice.