Hunter Biden's LAPTOP Memecoin Crashes 95% in First Hour on Base, Founders Insist 'Nobody Sold

Hunter Biden's $LAPTOP memecoin fell as much as 95.7% within its first hour of trading on Wednesday after launching on the Ethereum layer-2 network Base, according to CoinGecko data. The token opened at $199.50, traded at $2.0977 by 3:45 p.m. UTC, and recorded more than $13.4 million in trading volume. Blockchain intelligence firm Arkham reported $LAPTOP topped out at $190.81 two minutes after the 8:02 a.m. ET launch, implying a fully diluted valuation near $144 billion against a liquidity pool holding only $48,000. One wallet pulled $249,800 from Binance before launch, bought 9,124 $LAPTOP, and sold most of the position minutes later for roughly $1.18 million, while another trader spent about $200,000 on 919 tokens near $218, a position worth under $3,000 an hour later.

The token was first reported by The Wall Street Journal and confirmed by Biden in an X post on Monday that featured the ticker alongside a 31-second montage of media coverage tied to a MacBook he reportedly left at a Delaware repair shop in 2019. The New York Post published files purportedly from the device before the 2020 election. $LAPTOP carries a fixed supply of 1 billion tokens, with 350 million circulating at launch. Founders including Biden are allocated 300 million tokens, or 30%, 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, such as Bitcoin hitting a new all-time high or a Democrat winning the 2028 election, and released to charity otherwise. The disclosures reserve 2% of supply for wallets that lost money on the $TRUMP memecoin and 8% for subscribers to Biden's "Where's Hunter" Substack newsletter.

The launch drew sharp backlash from crypto traders. Digital investigator Stephen Findeisen, known as Coffeezilla, called $LAPTOP a "shitcoin" and urged followers not to buy it, while pseudonymous developer scupytrooples told Biden there was "still time to walk this back." Prominent trader DonAlt called the launch "an utter embarrassment," and Byzantine General wrote that Biden should "never come back." Crypto exchange Kraken deleted a social post promoting the token after pushback in the replies, though it has not said it dropped plans to list $LAPTOP. Channel 5 host Andrew Callaghan told The Wall Street Journal neither he nor his program had anything to do with the coin, despite a Channel 5 mailing list being listed among airdrop recipients. Base founder Jesse Pollak said in an X post that the project had contacted his team but that Base made a "conscious decision" not to help with the token's design or promotion.

Biden defended the project on Wednesday, telling X, "The symbol they used to try to end me is now a symbol of resilience, redemption and recovery." He called President Donald Trump's $TRUMP token a "grift" and warned buyers not to expect him or anyone else to make $LAPTOP more valuable. He later denied profiting from the launch, writing, "The team's allocation is locked. Nobody on our side sold, and nobody could have. I, personally, have not made a single dollar." The $LAPTOP team published a Medium post stating it held no presale and made no allocations to investors or influencers, claiming the contract address, allocations, a Hacken security audit and a white paper were public before trading began. The team also announced plans to deploy 4 million tokens, or 0.4% of supply, as Aerodrome liquidity incentives beginning at midnight UTC on Thursday and to burn 10 million tokens, or 1% of supply, within the first week through its predictions program.

The launch tracks a pattern set by earlier political memecoins. President Donald Trump's $TRUMP token peaked near $75 shortly after its January 2025 launch and last traded around $2.24, a decline of roughly 97%, with nearly a million holders collectively losing an estimated $3.81 billion. The Melania Trump memecoin crashed more than 99% from its own peak. Biden had criticized that history directly in an Aug. 21 X post accusing World Liberty Financial of using political influence and leverage to benefit its founders, a critique that traders quickly turned into a hypocrisy argument once $LAPTOP's tokenomics became public.