Hunter Biden’s LAPTOP Faces Brutal Selloff as Bots Get Blamed for 98% Collapse

Hunter Biden’s LAPTOP memecoin plunged as much as 98% after its launch, with the project’s team blaming the collapse on sniper bots and limited liquidity. Early data from blockchain analytics firm Nansen showed that some buyers were left with six-figure losses.

The token debuted at 5 cents amid strong demand, but the project said its initial liquidity was not deep enough to absorb the surge of automated trading activity.

Sniper bots are programs that monitor new token launches and execute purchases within seconds, giving them an advantage over regular traders. LAPTOP initially jumped sharply before reversing those gains almost immediately.

To address the liquidity issue, the team said it plans to release another 4 million LAPTOP tokens, equivalent to 0.4% of the total supply, as incentives for Aerodrome liquidity pools starting Sept. 10.

Early buyers suffer steep losses

Nansen data shared with CoinDesk showed 46,675 buy transactions versus 16,038 sell transactions during a 24-hour period. The activity involved 20,085 unique buyers and 8,714 unique sellers, with most buyers still holding their tokens.

Among five wallets examined by Nansen, one had an estimated overall loss of around $199,000. That included $171,000 in realized losses and another $27,900 in unrealized losses.

A second wallet bought approximately 28,400 LAPTOP and had not sold any of its holdings, leaving it with an estimated loss of about $118,000.

Some wallets were still profitable. One address that purchased roughly 49,700 LAPTOP was showing an unrealized gain of approximately $13,000 when Nansen recorded the data.

Even after the dramatic decline, Nansen estimated LAPTOP’s market capitalization at around $720 million, with a fully diluted valuation of approximately $2.1 billion.

However, those figures can be misleading for a newly launched token with limited liquidity. Small trades can produce significant price movements in shallow markets, meaning the implied market capitalization may overstate the amount of capital actually invested.

Project rejects insider-access claims

The LAPTOP team also denied claims that insiders received an advantage during the launch.

It said there was no presale and that no allocations were reserved for investors, influencers or key opinion leaders. The project also said its contract address, token allocation details, security audit and other disclosures were published before trading started.

“Everyone had the same information, at the same time,” the team said in a Thursday blog post.

The project reiterated that founders control 30% of the token supply, with that allocation locked for six months and then vested over two years.

Another 30% of LAPTOP’s supply is connected to a prediction mechanism. Depending on the outcome of specified events, those tokens will either be burned or donated to charity.

LAPTOP draws on a political controversy

The token takes its name from the laptop Hunter Biden left at a Delaware repair shop in 2019. The device’s contents subsequently became a recurring feature of Republican attacks against his father, Joe Biden, during two election cycles.

Hunter Biden confirmed LAPTOP on X on Monday, posting the ticker alongside a montage of news anchors discussing the memecoin. The project effectively transformed an object tied to a major political controversy into a tradable digital asset.

The token’s launch had already generated backlash within the crypto community, with several traders publicly calling on Hunter Biden to cancel the project before trading began.