Hunter Biden’s memecoin tanks on first day: Was that the point of his image rehabilitation?

By Easton Martin

Hunter Biden entered the cryptocurrency market on Wednesday with the rollout of a memecoin named LAPTOP, which collapsed by more than 98 percent within hours of trading and left thousands of retail buyers holding steep losses.

Deployed on Coinbase’s Base blockchain, the token briefly exploded to an opening peak near $200 before plunging under two dollars. The spike produced a momentary on-paper valuation in the billions. The price evaporated as massive sell orders hit the thin liquidity pool.

On-chain forensic data quickly contradicted claims of an orderly launch. Analytics firm Bubblemaps reported that over 80 percent of wallets purchasing LAPTOP suffered immediate losses. Around 60 percent of top-holding wallets were brand-new addresses funded just days or hours before the token went live. Blockchain tracking firm Arkham flagged that an address linked to the project received 100 million tokens a week prior to public trading and distributed 42.5 million directly into the open market.

The fallout of the coin brought immediate rebukes from the industry. Base creator Jesse Pollak announced that the network explicitly refused to assist Biden’s team with the token design or marketing. Crypto exchange Kraken deleted a promotional post for the coin following user backlash. Independent journalist Andrew Callaghan also issued a public statement severing ties with the rollout, stating his team had been misled after initial reports showed his subscriber list had been incorporated into the project’s token distribution plans without his consent.

Biden branded and marketed the token as a political statement aimed at reclaiming the symbol of his abandoned computer hardware, but the launch appeared to be nothing more than an exploitative scheme. Internet investigator Stephen Findeisen pointed out that Biden had previously condemned speculative political crypto tokens as corrupt before launching his own version to cash in on political notoriety.  

The catastrophic debut shreds Biden’s multi-year public relations effort to portray himself as a reformed, sober person pursuing redemption.