A cryptocurrency token created by Hunter Biden and named after the laptop he left at a Wilmington-area repair shop in 2019 lost more than 99 percent of its value within hours of going live Wednesday.
The token, $LAPTOP, launched around 8:05 AM and hit a high of $222 before crashing to $1.79 by 12:20 PM the same day — a collapse of roughly four hours from peak to near-total loss.
Blockchain analytics platform Bubblemaps found that about 80 percent of traders who bought $LAPTOP ended up losing money. More than 15,000 wallets were left in the red after the launch. Bubblemaps CEO Nicolas Vaiman said the token’s supply had been “extremely concentrated” before launch, leaving it vulnerable to a “dump.”
Records reviewed by Bubblemaps show a project-linked wallet received 100 million tokens a week before the launch and later sold off roughly 42.5 million of them. A separate, unidentified wallet received another 14.5 million tokens about two hours before trading opened — the kind of pattern crypto watchers associate with so-called rug-pull schemes, in which insiders sell into a hype-driven rally before ordinary buyers can react.
The pitch before the crash
Hours before launch, Biden addressed prospective buyers directly, framing the token as something more than a financial bet:
“You should not expect me or anyone else to make this token more valuable for you. $LAPTOP isn’t just about owning something, it’s about saying something. Everybody gets knocked down. How do we help each other and our country to get back up?”
The token’s name referenced the laptop Biden abandoned at a Delaware repair shop in 2019, which became a major flashpoint in national politics. In promotional material, Biden called the coin a “symbol of resilience, redemption, and recovery.”
Twenty percent of the one billion total tokens were reserved for distribution to specific groups, including wallets belonging to people who had previously lost money buying the $TRUMP token, subscribers to Biden’s Substack, and a mailing list associated with video journalist Andrew Callaghan. Callaghan said afterward that neither he nor his company had any involvement in the project.
Founders, including Biden, retained 30 percent of the supply, which is locked for six months and vests over two years. The project’s structure also tied potential future token burns to 30 predetermined events, among them a Democratic victory in the 2028 presidential election.
As of publication, Biden had not issued a public statement addressing the crash or the losses reported by more than 15,000 wallets that took part in the launch.
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