Hunter Biden's $LAPTOP memecoin dumps 95% in an hour, founder insists "nobody sold

Hunter Biden's $LAPTOP memecoin lost more than 95% of its value within the first hour of trading on Wednesday, prompting accusations of a rug pull from X users and a denial of profit from Biden himself. The token, issued on Ethereum layer-2 network Base, opened at $199.50 and traded at $26.88 by 12:30 pm UTC before falling to $0.8562, according to CoinGecko data. It recorded more than $2.5 million in trading volume.

Biden said on X that the team's allocation is locked and that no one on his side sold tokens. "I, personally, have not made a single dollar," he wrote. He attributed the price action to insufficient liquidity and "snipers," referring to trading bots that quickly accumulate tokens when trading opens. The LAPTOP team echoed that explanation in a Medium post, saying the initial pool launched at $0.05 per token but the market maker's liquidity was insufficient to meet demand.

"The team had no token presale, no stealth deployment, no hidden supply, and no surprise to benefit insiders," the project wrote, noting it published the contract address, token allocations, a Hacken security audit and a white paper before trading began. LAPTOP said it would deploy 4 million tokens, or 0.4% of the total supply, as liquidity incentives for Aerodrome pools starting at midnight UTC on Thursday, and announced plans to burn 10 million tokens within the first week of launch through its predictions program, equivalent to 1% of the original total supply.

The memecoin takes its name from a MacBook Hunter Biden reportedly left at a Delaware repair shop in 2019, whose files were published by the New York Post before the 2020 US presidential election and used against Biden and his father, then-presidential candidate Joe Biden. "The symbol they used to try to end me is now a symbol of resilience, redemption and recovery," Biden wrote on X. He also called President Donald Trump's token a "grift" and warned buyers not to expect him or anyone else to make $LAPTOP more valuable.

The project has a fixed supply of 1 billion tokens, with 350 million circulating at launch. Founders, including Biden, are allocated 300 million tokens, or 30% of the supply, locked for six months and vested monthly over the following 24 months. Another 30% is tied to political, cultural and crypto predictions, with tokens burned when specified outcomes occur and released to charity if they do not. The disclosures describe $LAPTOP as a digital collectible with no utility, ownership rights, voting rights, yield or profit-sharing rights, and reserve 2% of the total supply for wallets that lost money on the $TRUMP memecoin plus 8% for eligible subscribers to Biden's "Where's Hunter" Substack newsletter.

Base founder Jesse Pollak said on X that the project had contacted his team but that Base made a "conscious decision" not to help with the token's design or promotion. Digital investigator Stephen Findeisen, known as Coffeezilla, called $LAPTOP a "shitcoin" and urged his followers not to buy it, while X account "scupytrooples" told Biden there was "still time to walk this back." Biden did not respond to Cointelegraph's request for comment before publication.