He wanted to compensate people who had lost money on Donald Trump’s memecoin. Now Hunter Biden has delivered a textbook example of the risks in this market with a token of his own. $LAPTOP shot into triple-digit dollar territory immediately after its launch on Wednesday, only to plunge below $2 within hours. Depending on the trading venue and data provider, its peak ranged from around $191 to $222. But another figure was even more remarkable: during the first few minutes, the token briefly showed a fully diluted valuation of around $144 billion — even though the underlying liquidity pool contained only about $48,000. That discrepancy explains much of what happened next.
$222 — and $1.79 just hours later
$LAPTOP began trading on September 9 on Base, a blockchain developed by Coinbase. This was not a conventional stock market debut, nor was the token initially listed on a major centralized crypto exchange. Instead, it traded on decentralized platforms where buyers and sellers interact through so-called liquidity pools.
What happened next varies slightly depending on the data source. Forbes recorded a peak price of $222 at around 8:05 a.m. Eastern Time and a price of just $1.79 a little more than four hours later. Blockchain analytics firm Arkham, by contrast, identified a high of $190.81 only about two minutes after launch. The Wall Street Journal cited $199.51. Such discrepancies are not unusual for a newly launched token trading simultaneously across different decentralized markets with extremely limited liquidity. They do little to change the overall picture: $LAPTOP lost almost all of its initial price.
According to data from Bubblemaps, around 80 percent of buyers lost money. More than 15,000 wallets were in the red, according to the company. The blockchain analysts also pointed to a highly concentrated token distribution before launch, making the market particularly vulnerable to rapid selling.
How $48,000 suddenly became $144 billion
Shortly after launch, Arkham displayed a fully diluted valuation, or FDV, of around $144 billion for $LAPTOP. That made it appear as though the newly launched memecoin had suddenly become more valuable than many major international corporations.
It had not.
Put simply, FDV is calculated by multiplying the current token price by the total number of tokens ultimately intended to exist. In the case of $LAPTOP, the planned supply is one billion tokens. But such a calculation says nothing about whether anything close to that number of tokens could actually be sold at the displayed price. The project itself also states that only part of the total supply was freely available at launch, with additional tokens allocated or released later under different rules.
In the case of $LAPTOP, the distortion was especially striking. While Arkham displayed an FDV of around $144 billion, the relevant liquidity pool contained only about $48,000 at the time. In other words, $144 billion had not flowed into the token. A small number of purchases in a tiny market had merely established a price that was then extrapolated across an enormous token supply.
For investors, that is dangerous. A displayed price is only as robust as the market behind it. In a liquid blue-chip stock, large volumes can change hands without a single purchase multiplying the share price. In a small memecoin pool, relatively modest orders can trigger extreme moves. Anyone buying after the price has already surged vertically may later discover that, once prices start falling, there is nowhere near enough demand to sell their position at anything close to the displayed value.
Seconds determined profit or loss
Individual blockchain transactions illustrate just how brutal that mechanism can be. According to Arkham’s analysis, one wallet bought 9,124 $LAPTOP tokens immediately after launch and sold them just minutes later for around $1.18 million. Another buyer invested roughly $200,000 near the peak. About an hour later, the position was worth less than $3,000.
Then there are so-called sniper bots: automated programs designed to detect newly released tokens and buy them within seconds — often before ordinary investors have any realistic chance to react. The Wall Street Journal attributed part of $LAPTOP’s extreme initial price movement to precisely this combination of decentralized trading, the absence of an established reference price and automated purchases.
The price collapse alone, however, does not show that Hunter Biden or other people involved in the project carried out a so-called rug pull by selling early and leaving later buyers with the losses. Such allegations circulated after the crash, but there is currently no solid evidence to support them.
Trump’s coin was supposed to be part of the story
The political background makes the collapse even more notable. Hunter Biden deliberately marketed $LAPTOP as a reference to the laptop that became the subject of years of political controversy during his father’s presidency. The project describes the token as an attempt to reclaim the narrative surrounding it. Before launch, Biden himself characterized it as a symbol of resilience and starting over.
At the same time, the marketing explicitly targeted Donald Trump. Biden had criticized Trump’s $TRUMP token as a “grift” and announced that part of the $LAPTOP supply would be distributed to people who had lost money on Trump’s memecoin. In total, the project reserves 20 percent of the token supply for airdrops. Alongside affected $TRUMP buyers, recipients are intended to include members of Biden’s own community. Another 30 percent is allocated to the founders, 30 percent is tied to an unusual series of political, cultural and crypto-related events, and at least five percent is earmarked for charitable purposes.
Trump’s own memecoin has certainly provided grounds for criticism: $TRUMP is also trading far below its former peak. That gives $LAPTOP’s rapid collapse a certain irony. Biden had explicitly sought to distinguish his project from Trump’s crypto ventures — only to produce, immediately after launch, the same pattern of hype, extreme volatility and heavy losses for late buyers that has long made celebrity-driven memecoins controversial.
The token itself warns that it could fall to zero
One striking aspect of the project is how openly it describes the risk. On its official website, $LAPTOP is explicitly characterized as a memecoin intended for entertainment and community participation. The token does not represent shares, ownership or other economic rights. Digital assets are volatile, the site warns, and the price could fall to zero.
Hunter Biden also warned publicly on the evening before launch that buyers should not expect him or anyone else involved to make the token appreciate in value. In his telling, $LAPTOP was intended more as a political and social statement than as a conventional investment.
That does not eliminate the underlying problem. Once such a statement becomes freely tradable, acquires a market price and attracts buyers speculating on its appreciation, the same basic rule applies as anywhere else: whoever buys must eventually find someone willing to buy the asset from them.
With extremely thin liquidity, the gap between wealth displayed on a screen and wealth that can actually be realized can become enormous.
Hunter Biden’s $LAPTOP needed barely more than a few minutes to demonstrate that. The most spectacular number of the day may therefore not have been the $222 token price at all. It was the $144 billion displayed on the screen while only $48,000 in liquidity stood behind it.
SK
