Hunter Biden's $LAPTOP memecoin lost 95% of its value within hours of its Wednesday launch on the Base network. The token's collapse shows investor appetite for memecoins has not recovered even as bitcoin has rallied in recent weeks.
Hunter Biden's namesake token, $LAPTOP, soared out of the gate from an initial reference price of around $37 to a peak above $222 a coin minutes after trading began on Wednesday. The gains fizzled fast: by early Wednesday afternoon the coin traded at around $1.80, a 95% decline from its peak.
A familiar memecoin pattern
The former first son launched the coin less than two days after the Wall Street Journal first reported the project. Memecoins carry no intrinsic value and often see their market value evaporate within days or hours of launch. Bitcoin prices have come charging back over the past couple of weeks, but the broader market for crypto tokens has, for the most part, stayed in a slump.
According to Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers: "My initial reaction was, 'That's so last year.'" He added that the track record of memecoins has been rocky, and it was not clear the issue had the backing or timing to buck that trend.
Trading volume and concentrated holdings
Pump.fun data showed volume in the token was pretty light, at about $39 million since launch. It remains unclear how much of Wednesday's trading reflected real supply-and-demand dynamics, and how many investors lost money, though some users complained about the token's performance on Reddit and Pump.fun.
Basescan data showed the five largest of nearly 29,000 wallets held 84% of the total free float of $LAPTOP tokens. Most of the 1 billion tokens remained subject to a lockup, but the market value of tokens available to trade was just under $500 million, according to CoinMarketCap.
Ties to the Trump family's own coins
Biden confirmed his plans to launch the coin through a post on X on Tuesday, in which he also criticized the Trump family for what he called "breaking trust" by launching its own memecoin. Chainalysis data shared by the New York Times has shown that Trump's $TRUMP token has left hundreds of thousands of wallets with losses, most of them holding relatively small amounts. First lady Melania Trump has also seen big declines in her own token, $MELANIA. Biden said some $LAPTOP tokens were airdropped to wallets held by people who lost money on the $TRUMP token.
The $LAPTOP token launched on Base, an open-source blockchain protocol built on Ethereum whose creation was spearheaded by Coinbase, though the exchange doesn't control which coins trade on it. A Coinbase representative told MarketWatch that Base is a permissionless network where anyone can build, and that deploying a token on it isn't a review or an endorsement.
Biden said tokens were also sent to his subscribers and to people on a mailing list curated by video journalist Andrew Callaghan, whose Channel Five has nearly 4 million YouTube subscribers. Callaghan said in a statement on X that he had nothing to do with the project and had only shared the contact list with Biden to help him expand his audience. Mitchell Jackson, a representative for Callaghan, said Callaghan had no idea the list would be used for a crypto project and was misled by Biden.
Source: MarketWatch
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