Patrick Byrne Net Worth

What Is Patrick Byrne's Net Worth?

Patrick Byrne is an American entrepreneur who has a net worth of $75 million. Patrick Byrne is best known for being the former CEO of Overstock.com. Byrne launched Overstock in 1999 and took the company public in 2002. In 2005, he was known for his campaign against illegal naked short selling and has been an advocate for cryptocurrencies, with Overstock.com being the first major online retailer to accept bitcoin in 2014. Patrick took a leave of absence in 2016 for health reasons, and in 2019, he resigned due to allegations that he was in an intimate relationship with Russian agent Maria Butina, along with controversial comments he made.

In 2011, he was named Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst & Young. Since leaving Overstock.com, Byrne has been in the news for repeatedly claiming that the 2020 U.S. presidential election was stolen, and he toured the country to give anti-vaccine speeches to COVID-19 conspiracy theorists.

Stock Holdings

In September 2019, Patrick announced his intention to sell all of his shares in Overstock, roughly 4.8 million shares, or 13% of the company. The sale announcement came a few weeks after putting out a bizarre press release related to the Maria Butina affair. On September 18, 2019, an SEC filing confirmed that Byrne had sold all but 87,000 shares in the company, generating $90 million in pre-tax proceeds. The remaining 87,000 shares were gifted to an unnamed entity.

Early Life

Patrick Byrne was born Patrick Michael Byrne on November 29, 1962, in Fort Wayne, Indiana. His family later lived in Woodstock, Vermont, and Hanover, New Hampshire. Patrick's father, John J. Byrne, served as the chairman of White Mountains Insurance Group as well as Berkshire Hathaway's GEICO insurance subsidiary. He was also a director at Overstock.com from 1999 to 2002. Patrick majored in Asian Studies and Western Philosophy at Dartmouth College, graduating with a bachelor's degree in 1985. He later earned a master's degree from King's College, Cambridge, where he was a Marshall Scholar, and then he attended Stanford University and earned a Ph.D. in philosophy.

Career

During his time as a teaching fellow at Stanford (1989–1991), Byrne was the manager of Elissar, Inc. and Blackhawk Investment Co. From 1994 to 1997, he served as CEO, chairman, and president of the industrial torch manufacturer Centricut, LLC, and from 1997 to 1998, he held the same positions at the Berkshire Hathaway company Fechheimer Brothers, Inc., which manufactured uniforms for firefighters, the police, and the military. In 1999, the founder of D2-Discounts Direct approached Patrick and requested operating capital. Byrne invested $7 million in D2-Discounts Direct for an equity stake of more than 60%, and a few months later, he took over as the company's CEO and renamed it Overstock.com. In 2002, he initiated an IPO of the company, making it one of the first to go public using the "Dutch auction" method. In 2004, Overstock spent millions of dollars on an online auction platform in an attempt to compete with eBay, but it wasn't successful and shut down in 2011. Byrne began investing in blockchain and cryptocurrency in 2013, and Overstock subsequently became the first major retailer to allow customers to pay with Bitcoin. In April 2016, Patrick took a leave of absence due to Hepatitis C complications, and he returned to work three months later. The following year, he started looking for a buyer for the company's retail business, to no avail.

In a 2005 conference call with analysts, Byrne stated that "there's been a plan since we were in our teens to destroy our stock, drive it down to $6–$10 … and even a plan for how the company would then get whacked up." That year, Overstock sued Rocker Partners, a hedge fund, and Gradient Analytics, an equities research firm, accusing them of colluding to sell the company short and paying for negative reports that would drive down share prices. Two years later, Overstock sued several large investment banks, claiming that their brokers had participated in illegal naked short selling. Patrick launched the website Deep Capture, which was dedicated to his thoughts on naked short selling, and after businessman Altaf Nazerali sued him over articles that were published on the website, Byrne had to pay him $1.2 million in damages. In August 2019, Patrick announced his resignation from Overstock, stating, "In July I came forward to a small set of journalists regarding my involvement in certain government matters. Doing so was not my first choice, but I was reminded of the damage done to our nation for three years and felt my duty as a citizen precluded me from staying silent any longer. Though patriotic Americans are writing me in support, my presence may affect and complicate all manner of business relationships, from insurability to strategic discussions regarding our retail business." A month after resigning, Byrne sold his stake in the company at the request of Overstock's board of directors.

(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Political Involvement

Byrne has been a vocal proponent of Donald Trump's claim that the 2020 U.S. presidential election was stolen. Patrick repeatedly promoted conspiracy theories about the election on social media and at rallies, and The Daily Beast referred to him as "one of the strangest characters of the last days of the Trump administration, visiting the White House in December, dressed in jeans and a hoodie, scarfing down meatballs, and bickering with Trump's legal team and administration officials, as he, Flynn, and Powell together pitched the then-president on their democracy-thwarting schemes."

After Byrne met with Trump, Sidney Powell, Mike Flynn, and Emily Newman at the White House to come up with a plan to overturn the election results, he reportedly hired private jets to fly the Proud Boys and members of other far-right groups to Washington, D.C., and he spoke at the Trump rally on January 6, 2021, that was followed by an attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Later that year, he was the top financier of the Arizona State Senate Republicans' audit of Maricopa County's presidential vote, which ended up confirming that Joe Biden won the county. Patrick self-published the 2021 book "The Deep Rig: How Election Fraud Cost Donald J. Trump the White House, By a Man Who Did Not Vote for Him," and he funded and appeared in the documentary "The Deep Rig," which was also released that year. In 2023, Byrne was sued for defamation by Hunter Biden after he made social media posts and interview comments in which he accused Biden of soliciting bribes from Iran.

Personal Life

Shortly after graduating from Dartmouth, Patrick was diagnosed with testicular cancer. He recovered, but in his twenties, he was hospitalized for close to three years and in convalescence for another three years due to three bouts of cancer. Byrne has been a practitioner of martial arts for decades, and he holds a black belt in taekwondo. He is also interested in skiing, scuba diving, and skydiving.

Real Estate

According to a 2021 article in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Byrne purchased "four homes, a condominium and a medical building" in the Sarasota area. The article states that his company paid $3.35 million for a home that was valued at approximately $1.5 million and that it bought a 10,000-square-foot medical building (which used to house Bayside Gynecology) for $2.5 million, though it was valued at just $654,300.

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