Hunter Biden Denies Profiting From LAPTOP Memecoin Amid Price Crash
Vexoda Newsroom
Hunter Biden has refuted claims of profiting from the recently launched LAPTOP memecoin following a significant price drop, stating his team's tokens are locked and he personally has not earned any fu
The newly launched memecoin, named LAPTOP, experienced a dramatic price decline shortly after its debut, losing over 95% of its value within the first hour of trading. This sharp downturn led to accusations from some social media users that the project was a 'rug pull,' a term used when developers abandon a project and run away with investors' funds. Hunter Biden, who is associated with the memecoin, publicly denied these allegations, asserting that neither he nor his team had sold any tokens and that his personal involvement had not yielded any financial gain. He attributed the volatility to factors such as insufficient initial liquidity and the activity of 'snipers,' which are automated trading bots designed to exploit market inefficiencies.
The LAPTOP memecoin is named after a MacBook laptop that Hunter Biden reportedly left for repair in 2019. This device and its contents became a focal point during the 2020 US presidential election, with allies of then-President Donald Trump utilizing reporting on files purportedly from the laptop for political purposes. Interestingly, before launching his own cryptocurrency venture, Biden had been critical of crypto initiatives linked to the Trump family, accusing them of leveraging political influence for financial benefit. The LAPTOP token was launched on the Base blockchain, a layer-2 scaling solution developed by Coinbase.
In response to the market reaction, the LAPTOP development team issued a statement to defend the project's launch integrity. They emphasized that no pre-sale occurred and that no tokens were allocated to investors or influencers prior to trading. The team highlighted that crucial information, including the contract address, token allocations, a security audit by Hacken, and a white paper, were made public before trading commenced. They asserted that the initial token pool was established at $0.05 per token but contended that the market maker's liquidity was insufficient to accommodate the demand, leading to the price collapse.
To address the liquidity concerns and stabilize the market, the LAPTOP team announced plans to inject additional liquidity. They committed to deploying 4 million tokens, representing 0.4% of the total supply, as incentives for Aerodrome liquidity pools. Furthermore, the team revealed intentions to execute token burns, which involve permanently removing tokens from circulation, thereby reducing the total supply. A plan was set to burn 10 million tokens within the first week post-launch, stemming from their predictions program, which constitutes 1% of the initial supply.
Project disclosures outline a specific token distribution model. Founders are allocated 30% of the total 1 billion token supply, with these tokens subject to a six-month lock-up period followed by a 24-month vesting schedule. An additional 30% is designated for a predictions program tied to political, cultural, and crypto events, with tokens being burned or allocated to charity based on outcomes. The disclosures also detail allocations for users who experienced losses on the TRUMP memecoin (2% of supply) and eligible subscribers to Biden's "Where's Hunter" Substack newsletter (8%), with a further 10% reserved for future discretionary airdrops.
On-chain analytics firms have provided data shedding light on the token's trading activity and holder distribution. Nansen reported that one wallet associated with the LAPTOP token held an unrealized loss of $117,800, with another showing a paper loss of $12,300 at a specific snapshot in time. The analytics also recorded a substantial volume of transactions, with tens of thousands of buy and sell orders from thousands of unique participants within a 24-hour period. Separately, blockchain analytics platform Bubblemaps noted that a significant portion of the top LAPTOP holder wallets were recently created ('fresh'), with many funded on the day of the launch, raising further questions about the token's distribution and early trading dynamics.
Source: Cointelegraph. Summarized and rewritten by the Vexoda Newsroom. This is market news, not financial advice.