LAPTOP Memecoin Collapse: Hunter Biden Refutes Profit Claims Following 95% Value Drop
Following LAPTOP's dramatic 95% decline on its debut day, Hunter Biden has rejected claims of profiting. Analysis from Nansen showed wallet losses, and Bubblemaps identified recently created wallets among major holders.
Following the catastrophic launch-day collapse of his LAPTOP memecoin, Hunter Biden has rejected accusations that he profited from the project, stating that neither he nor members of his team had liquidated any tokens.
Multiple users on X platform leveled accusations of a "rug pull" against the LAPTOP initiative following the memecoin's dramatic loss of over 95% of its market value within the opening hour of Wednesday's trading session. Data from CoinGecko indicated the newly launched token was trading at $0.8562 at the time this article was written.
"The team's allocation is locked. Nobody on our side sold, and nobody could have," Biden said in an X post Wednesday. "I, personally, have not made a single dollar."
According to Biden, the dramatic price movements resulted from inadequate liquidity combined with activity from "snipers," which refer to automated trading bots designed to rapidly acquire tokens at the moment trading commences.
The memecoin on the Base blockchain derives its name from a MacBook that Hunter Biden allegedly abandoned at a computer repair facility in 2019. Political allies of Trump leveraged the New York Post's coverage of files supposedly recovered from the laptop as ammunition against both Hunter Biden and his father, former US President Joe Biden, throughout the 2020 presidential campaign.
Prior to introducing his own cryptocurrency token, Biden had been critical of the Trump family's cryptocurrency endeavors. In a post dated Aug. 21, Biden accused World Liberty Financial of exploiting political influence and power to enrich its founding members.
Biden did not respond to Cointelegraph's request for comment.
LAPTOP team announces liquidity incentives and token burns
In a community update, the LAPTOP team mounted a defense of the token launch, asserting that no presale of tokens had occurred and that no allocations were provided to investors or social media influencers. The team stated that the smart contract address, distribution of tokens, a security audit conducted by Hacken, and a comprehensive white paper were all made public prior to the commencement of trading.
"There was no stealth deployment, no hidden supply, and no surprise to benefit insiders," the team said in a Medium post.
According to their account, the initial liquidity pool was established at $0.05 per token, but the market maker failed to provide sufficient liquidity to accommodate the level of demand experienced.
The LAPTOP project announced it would allocate 4 million tokens, representing 0.4% of the complete token supply, to serve as liquidity incentives for Aerodrome pools, with deployment scheduled to begin at midnight UTC on Thursday. Additionally, the team revealed intentions to burn 10 million tokens during the first week following launch through its predictions program, which equals 1% of the initial total token supply.
Based on the project's public disclosures, the founders have been allocated 300 million tokens, constituting 30% of the 1 billion total token supply. These founder tokens are subject to a six-month lock-up period, followed by monthly vesting distributed across the subsequent 24 months.
An additional 30% of the supply has been designated for predictions connected to political, cultural and cryptocurrency-related events. When predetermined outcomes materialize, tokens are burned; otherwise, they are directed to charitable causes. The disclosure documents indicate that prediction-related token burns impact tokens that have not yet vested.
Nansen tracks wallet losses as Bubblemaps flags fresh holders
Data from Nansen shared with Cointelegraph on Thursday revealed one LAPTOP wallet experiencing an unrealized loss totaling $117,800, while another wallet showed a paper loss amounting to $12,300.
Two additional wallets displayed unrealized gains measuring $13,100 and $1,800 respectively. At the moment the data snapshot was captured, none of these four wallet addresses had executed any LAPTOP token sales. The analytical assessment encompassed five selected wallet addresses.
Nansen's records also documented 46,675 purchase transactions alongside 16,038 sale transactions throughout the 24-hour timeframe captured in its dataset, with participation from 20,085 distinct buyers and 8,714 distinct sellers.
Concurrently, blockchain analytics platform Bubblemaps reported on Wednesday that 60% of the wallets holding the largest quantities of LAPTOP tokens exhibited no previous transaction history.
In a subsequent post, the platform clarified its definition of "fresh" wallets as those that received their initial funding within the preceding 10 days, noting that the majority had been funded specifically on the day of the token launch.