Hunter Biden’s Crypto Coin Crashes 99% in 2 Hours After Launch

Hunter Biden’s newly launched cryptocurrency suffered a spectacular collapse Wednesday, losing roughly 99% of its peak value shortly after trading began. The meme coin, called $LAPTOP, debuted Sept. 9 on Base, the Ethereum layer-2 blockchain developed by Coinbase. The name is a reference to the laptop controversy that followed Biden for years and became a major political issue during the 2020 presidential campaign.

Trading began shortly after 8 a.m. Eastern time, and the token immediately surged. Blockchain analytics firm Arkham reported that $LAPTOP reached approximately $190.81 only about two minutes after its launch.

Other market trackers recorded an even higher momentary price. DexScreener data cited by The Block showed the token briefly climbing above $300 as frantic early trading produced an extraordinary spike.

The rally did not last. Within about 30 minutes, the cryptocurrency had surrendered roughly 90% of its value, and it was trading below $5 around the one-hour mark. Later data showed the token down approximately 99% from its early high.

At one point, the token’s theoretical valuation reached staggering levels. Arkham calculated a fully diluted valuation of approximately $144 billion even though the primary liquidity pool contained only about $48,000 at the time.

That massive difference helps explain how the apparent value of $LAPTOP could rise and fall so dramatically. With relatively little liquidity available, even a limited number of transactions can produce enormous swings in the quoted price of a newly launched cryptocurrency.

The project has a total supply of 1 billion tokens and was promoted by Biden as a way of turning one of the most controversial episodes of his public life into a symbol of resilience and recovery. A portion of the supply was also designated for charitable purposes and promotional distributions.

Some tokens were distributed through airdrops rather than direct purchases. The Block reported that eligible Substack subscribers could claim 4,276 $LAPTOP tokens apiece, creating potentially enormous paper gains during the token’s brief surge. Some recipients reportedly moved quickly to sell their allocations.

The project also set aside tokens for some cryptocurrency traders who had lost money on President Donald Trump’s $TRUMP meme coin, another politically connected digital asset that experienced significant volatility after its initial launch.

Biden and the project’s co-founders were allocated approximately 30% of the token supply under a vesting arrangement designed to prevent those holdings from being immediately sold. Another portion of the supply was tied to political and market milestones that could result in tokens either being destroyed or directed toward charity.

The chaotic opening also attracted sophisticated cryptocurrency traders and automated trading bots seeking to capitalize on the extreme price movement. Crypto publication Protos reported that analysts identified traders who may have earned substantial profits by entering and exiting positions within the token’s opening minutes.

The sudden collapse does not by itself demonstrate wrongdoing by Biden or the project. Newly launched meme coins can be exceptionally volatile, particularly when trading liquidity is thin and speculative demand causes prices to move far beyond levels that could realistically be sustained by the available market.

Still, $LAPTOP’s dramatic debut provides another example of the risks surrounding celebrity and politically themed cryptocurrencies. After briefly producing eye-popping valuations within minutes of launch, Hunter Biden’s token had erased nearly all of those early gains almost as quickly as they appeared.