USD
Hunter Biden’s LAPTOP Meme Coin Plunges as Pre-Launch Token Flows Draw Scrutiny
Base launch saw conflicting price peaks, sniper profits and heavy early selling
TL;DR
- Hunter Biden’s LAPTOP meme coin lost nearly all of its value within hours of beginning trading on Base.
- Arkham and Lookonchain cited large pre-launch token movements and early market-maker selling, while traders reported substantial sniper profits.
- LAPTOP included an airdrop aimed partly at TRUMP losers and other recipients, alongside a locked and vested founding-team allocation.
Trade smarter on Jupiter, Solana’s leading DEX built for fast execution and deep liquidity.
Swap tokens at competitive rates, route across multiple liquidity sources automatically, and access perpetuals, DCA, and advanced trading tools — all in one place!
Hunter Biden’s LAPTOP meme coin collapsed as much as 99.2% within hours of beginning trading on Base on September 9, 2026, as onchain tracking showed large token allocations had moved to designated addresses before public trading and several early participants rapidly sold or traded the asset.
LAPTOP price and valuation readings diverged sharply
Market readings varied substantially depending on the point in the launch and the measurement used.
LAPTOP had a total supply of 1 billion tokens. About 35% was unlocked when trading opened, while the balance was scheduled to enter circulation through cliffs and vesting over 36 months. The token traded through decentralized-exchange pools without a fixed offering price.
Hunter Biden had announced that 20% of LAPTOP supply would be earmarked for an airdrop covering TRUMP holders who lost money, subscribers to his Substack and a mailing list run by video journalist Andrew Callaghan. Another 30% went to the founding team under a six-month lock followed by roughly two years of vesting.
Biden tied the token to the controversy surrounding his laptop, which entered public view in October 2020 when emails from a device tied to him were reported. The material was initially characterized by some officials as “possible disinformation” and later authenticated by several news organizations. Biden wrote on X, “They turned laptop into a weapon. I turned it into a token.”
Crypto investigator Stephen Findeisen, better known as Coffeezilla, had urged his audience to avoid the asset before trading opened, telling them, “Do not buy it.”
More than a dozen counterfeit LAPTOP tokens surfaced across Solana, BNB Chain and TON within about one hour of a Wall Street Journal report on the project. The fake tokens generated around $6.9 million in combined trading despite having no official contract address because the genuine contract had not yet been published. Solidus Labs had previously counted more than 500 scam tokens during Base’s first weeks after launching in 2023.
Arkham flagged large token movements before trading opened
Arkham identified a wallet tagged as a Laptop Token address that received 100 million LAPTOP tokens seven days before the launch, equal to 10% of total supply. The wallet subsequently distributed 42.5 million tokens into the market, equivalent to 4.25% of total supply.
Market maker GSR received 15.5 million tokens four days before trading began, an allocation equal to 1.55% of supply, and began offloading after the launch. Wintermute separately held roughly 1.8 million tokens across multiple exchange-deposit addresses.
Lookonchain later said Wintermute had already sold $2 million worth of LAPTOP that it received from the token’s team.
Crypto analyst Rune said the launch’s “fair launch” positioning was undermined by allocations available to Substack subscribers. Rune said eligible recipients could claim 4,276 tokens apiece using fresh wallets that had never purchased LAPTOP, with each claim worth roughly $1 million at the reported peak.
Rune also said the airdrop wallet still held tokens carrying a nominal value of $7.9 billion at the cited price. “They didn't need to buy early,” Rune wrote. “They got tokens for free and dumped on everyone who bought the fair launch.”
Crypto analyst 100x Gem Finder also criticized the structure, writing, “There is no edge when the entire world knows about a memecoin launch before it happens.” The analyst added, “And if you're not early, you have zero edge.”
Sniper bots captured large gains as some buyers were wiped out
Several participants said sniper bots — automated systems that execute extremely fast trades — exploited the launch. Crypto analyst Dethective said one sniper made around $190,000.
Donaxbt said the highest-earning sniper they observed made $335,000, while other reported sniper profits exceeded $60,000.
Lookonchain highlighted a sharply different outcome for one buyer. The wallet withdrew $250,000 from Binance before launch and used $200,000 to buy LAPTOP near the top. By the time Lookonchain posted the transaction data, citing DeBank, the position was worth about $3,000, representing approximately $197,000 in lost value and about 98.5% of the deployed capital.
LAPTOP’s airdrop strategy was explicitly connected to losses among TRUMP holders. Nearly 1 million wallets had lost a combined approximately $3.8 billion on TRUMP, which launched in January 2025, reached nearly $73 and later traded around $2.25, leaving it roughly 97% below its high.
Public Citizen separately estimated that Trump-linked crypto ventures had left investors at least $4.7 billion underwater, with the TRUMP meme coin accounting for $3.2 billion of that amount.
Hunter Biden also told prospective LAPTOP participants not to expect financial returns. At one point, LAPTOP’s market capitalization exceeded the approximately $615 million valuation attributed to TRUMP, triggering one of the token’s 30 programmed burn conditions.
Pump Fun and Kraken had promoted LAPTOP before later backpedaling on that support. The related promotion episode was dated September 8, 2026, one day before the launch collapse, and the token’s earlier announcement had drawn little fanfare from the broader crypto community.
This article has been refined and enhanced by ChatGPT.
