Biden's son meme coin crashes, LAPTOP plummets 99%

Author: Zhou, ChainCatcher

At 8 PM Beijing time on September 9, the meme coin LAPTOP, issued by Hunter Biden, officially launched.

According to CoinGecko data, LAPTOP reached nearly $200 within the first hour of its launch, with a fully diluted valuation (FDV) approaching $200 billion at one point. Subsequently, the coin's price plummeted, dropping by 99%, with the circulating market cap falling from a peak of approximately $9.63 billion to $619 million.

According to GeckoTerminal data, the liquidity of the Aerodrome liquidity pool where LAPTOP is located, which is the total value of tokens locked in the pool and USDC, dropped from $1.4 million to $691,000 within 40 minutes of opening. The thinner the pool, the greater the impact on price for the same amount of buying and selling.

Trump's TruthSocial account posted to question Hunter, asking whether this coin issuance was a chaotic meme coin launch or if buyers fell into a carefully designed rug pull, stating that the market wants to know who ran first and who took over.

The tokenomics and airdrop rules of LAPTOP have been detailed by ChainCatcher in the article "Hunter Biden's Official Announcement of Coin Issuance LAPTOP: Monetizing Scandals or Copying the TRUMP Script?," and will not be repeated here.

It is worth noting that Hunter had previously emphasized that this was a fair launch without insiders or pre-sales. However, according to on-chain analyst Rune, each of Hunter's Substack subscribers could claim 4,276 tokens, which at the peak opening price was worth over $1 million per share. These tokens were claimed by new wallets and immediately sold off, causing a 95% price drop within 15 minutes, with almost all the decline coming from airdrop claims, and normal trader sell-offs accounting for a very small proportion.

On-chain analyst Ai Yi tracked that two addresses received 4,276 tokens each from the Hunter Substack subscriber airdrop contract, selling them for $404,000 and $243,000 respectively, totaling over $647,000. One address has transferred the cashed-out USDC to the public tagged address of Safe architect FloB_Safe.

Investor Books posted that the 300 million founder shares publicly held by the Hunter team currently show zero monetization, but several wallets associated with the team have cashed out in advance. On September 8, the day before public trading began, one of the team's airdrop Safes transferred out 2.5 million tokens, which were later cashed out for approximately $2.34 million through a sales wallet.

Two bot wallets accurately placed liquidity orders at the exact second of opening, cashing out about $716,000. One Uniswap pool with a 5% fee was created as early as September 7, two days before public trading, generating about $550,000 in fee income. Additionally, 2.7 million tokens were deposited into the exchange Bitvavo before the DEX opened.

It is estimated that verified cash-outs amount to about $4 million, with a total estimate between $5 million and $10 million, and it was pointed out that the contract code itself was audited, with the real issues lying in the timeline of operations of these associated wallets.

Furthermore, Ai Yi also noted that besides the known market makers GSR Markets and G20, Wintermute is also a market maker for LAPTOP, having received 2.5 million market-making tokens from a multi-signature address, which have been distributed to multiple exchange deposit addresses. The three market makers collectively received 23 million tokens, accounting for 2.3% of the total supply, with GSR Markets receiving 15.5 million tokens and G20 receiving 5 million tokens.

The profits and losses for ordinary traders are even more disparate. According to on-chain monitoring, one address used only $100,000 in principal and cashed out over $1 million within minutes by trading LAPTOP. On the other hand, another address spent $200,000 to buy 919.4 LAPTOP at $217.5 at the opening, and 55 minutes later, the token dropped to $4.4, reducing this position by 98%, leaving only $4,045, resulting in a floating loss of $196,000, becoming the address with the most significant loss on LAPTOP at that time.

The previous article mentioned that the market's attitude towards the LAPTOP token is generally cautious. Just before the launch, Kraken had deleted promotional posts related to LAPTOP, and video journalist Andrew Callaghan announced he would distance himself from the project after learning that the audience was included in the token distribution plan. Base founder Jesse Pollak stated that the project team had contacted them, but Base decided not to participate in the token design or promotion.

Hunter responded on X, bluntly stating that Trump's TRUMP token is the real scam, writing that they turned the laptop into a weapon, while he turned it into a token. He emphasized that the 30% of tokens held by the team are not locked and have no release period, while reminding buyers not to expect him or any related parties to drive up the token price.

After the launch surge, well-known crypto KOL Bonk Guy stated that the fully diluted valuation of LAPTOP in the hundreds of billions is absurd, and anyone buying at the current price should be prepared to lose all their funds, believing that the project clearly exhibits speculative behavior of "wanting to extract profits while knowing little about the crypto industry." Trump's son Eric Trump also mocked on X, saying Hunter should go back to painting.

Hunter packaged LAPTOP as a recycling of scandals and called the TRUMP token a scam, but essentially, the issues exposed by both celebrity coins are almost the same.

Previous reports indicated that the Trump couple netted about $1 billion through their token, while most ordinary investors ended up with losses. LAPTOP claims to subsidize TRUMP's loss-making users, but the team's associated wallets cashed out in advance, and market makers simultaneously received circulating supply for sale. These details point to the same conclusion: when celebrities issue coins, they talk about community and fairness, but the flow of funds on-chain has already provided the answer: who ran first and who took over.