Hunter Biden’s new $LAPTOP cryptocurrency did not exactly have the smooth launch its creators were hoping for. The meme coin went live on September 9, 2026, on Base, the Ethereum layer-2 network associated with Coinbase, and within minutes its price shot to extraordinary levels before collapsing almost as quickly as it had risen. At one point, $LAPTOP traded around $190 to more than $220, only to fall by roughly 98% to 99% within the first hour. Thousands of traders were left holding a token that was suddenly worth a tiny fraction of what they had paid for it.
That spectacular crash immediately led to searches for “Hunter Biden crypto scam,” “Hunter Biden LAPTOP scam,” and “$LAPTOP rug pull.” Critics accused the project of being another celebrity-style pump and dump, while Hunter Biden and his team denied that they had rugged investors or sold their own tokens. According to Biden, the collapse was caused by thin liquidity, technical problems and automated sniper bots that rushed into the token as soon as trading began. So what actually happened, and does the evidence support calling $LAPTOP a scam?
What Is Hunter Biden’s $LAPTOP Coin?
$LAPTOP is a meme cryptocurrency launched by Hunter Biden and his project team, with the name referring to the infamous laptop controversy that followed him for years. The project was promoted partly as a satirical response to Donald Trump’s crypto ventures, particularly the $TRUMP meme coin. Biden presented $LAPTOP as a way of taking something that had been used against him and turning it into a cryptocurrency built around community, charity and what he described as resilience and recovery.
The project was never presented as a conventional investment with an underlying business generating revenue. Like other political and celebrity meme coins, much of its value depended on attention, speculation and the public profile of the person attached to it. Before launch, the project said portions of the supply would be used for various purposes, including an allocation for people who had lost money on Trump-affiliated meme coins. Reports also indicated that founder tokens were subject to lockups, while other portions of the supply were earmarked for liquidity, charity and other uses.
That context matters because buying a meme coin is fundamentally different from buying shares in a company. There is no conventional business underneath $LAPTOP that suddenly became worth hundreds of billions of dollars in a few minutes. The enormous valuation seen immediately after launch was largely a reflection of the token’s trading price and extremely limited liquidity rather than hundreds of billions of dollars of cash sitting behind the project.
What Happened to $LAPTOP?
The launch itself was the real disaster.
According to blockchain and market data reported shortly after the launch, $LAPTOP reached approximately $190.81 within about two minutes of going live. Other price feeds recorded peaks above $200, with some reports putting the high above $220. The token’s implied fully diluted valuation briefly reached an astonishing level even though the available liquidity was tiny in comparison. Decrypt reported that the token briefly implied a fully diluted valuation of roughly $144 billion while the liquidity pool contained only around $48,000.
That is a recipe for extreme volatility. When there is very little liquidity available, relatively small amounts of buying can push the quoted price dramatically higher, but selling can have the opposite effect. Once traders started unloading their tokens, the price had nowhere near enough liquidity to absorb the selling pressure.
Within around 30 minutes, the token had already lost approximately 90% of its value, and within the first hour it was trading around only a few dollars. Forbes reported that $LAPTOP reached about $222 before falling to roughly $1.79 later that morning. The Washington Post likewise reported a plunge from around $190 to below $2 and said blockchain analytics indicated that about 80% of traders who bought the token lost money.
That is an absolutely brutal outcome for people who bought into the initial excitement.
Was $LAPTOP a Rug Pull?
This is where things get more complicated than simply writing “Hunter Biden scammed investors.”
A rug pull normally refers to a crypto project where insiders remove liquidity or sell their holdings in a way that leaves ordinary investors with a severely damaged or worthless token. The fact that $LAPTOP crashed by roughly 99% certainly made it look like one to many traders, and the word “rug pull” appeared almost immediately across crypto communities and social media.
However, a massive price collapse alone does not prove that the project’s creators secretly sold their holdings. Hunter Biden specifically denied that he or his partners sold tokens during the crash. He said the team allocation was locked and claimed that nobody on his side had sold. Cointelegraph reported the same denial, while the Washington Post reported Biden’s claim that he personally had not made money from the launch.
There is therefore an important unanswered question: who actually sold into the early price spike, and who made money from it?
Blockchain data showed that early traders were able to make enormous profits while the majority of later buyers lost heavily. One reported trader turned an investment of roughly $250,000 into more than $1 million by selling early, although that wallet has not been established as belonging to Hunter Biden or another project insider.
So I would not state as a fact that Hunter Biden personally executed a rug pull. The evidence available right now does not establish that. What is beyond dispute is that ordinary traders suffered huge losses during the collapse, while some early participants managed to get out with very large gains.
Hunter Biden Blames Sniper Bots and Low Liquidity
Hunter Biden’s explanation for the crash is that the project was overwhelmed by demand almost immediately after launch. His team blamed automated “sniper bots,” which are programs designed to enter newly launched tokens extremely quickly, along with inadequate initial liquidity and technical problems.
The explanation is technically plausible. Sniper bots are common in newly launched cryptocurrency markets, particularly when traders believe a token associated with a famous person could explode in price. If bots and early buyers enter before ordinary traders can react, they can purchase at extremely low prices and sell into the buying frenzy that follows.
The $LAPTOP team said the initial liquidity could not handle the sudden interest and that it intended to introduce additional incentives and liquidity measures. The Block reported that the team specifically attributed the sharp launch volatility to sniper bots and thin liquidity.
But even if that explanation is completely accurate, it does not make the launch a good investment for ordinary buyers. In fact, the situation highlights exactly why newly launched meme coins can be so dangerous: the price can move wildly before most people even have a realistic opportunity to understand what they are buying.
Why Did $LAPTOP Reach $200 and Then Collapse?
The easiest way to understand the bizarre price movement is to think about liquidity rather than assuming the coin suddenly became worth billions.
A cryptocurrency’s quoted price is determined by trading activity, but that price can become extremely misleading when there is only a small amount of liquidity available. If a token launches with relatively little money available in its trading pool, aggressive buying can push the price upward at an extraordinary rate. The resulting market-cap calculation can make the project appear enormously valuable even though there is nowhere near that amount of money available for everyone to cash out.
That appears to be a major part of what happened with $LAPTOP. The token briefly reached a valuation that was completely out of proportion to the liquidity supporting the market. Once selling began, the same mechanism worked in reverse and the price collapsed. Decrypt’s reporting on the launch specifically highlighted the enormous gap between the token’s implied valuation and the roughly $48,000 liquidity pool.
This is why someone could see a $LAPTOP price of $190 or $220 on a chart and assume they were sitting on a fortune, only to discover that selling a significant amount could produce a dramatically lower price.
Who Actually Lost Money on $LAPTOP?
The people who bought after the initial explosion appear to have taken the biggest hit. Blockchain analytics reported that roughly 80% of traders ended up losing money, with more than 15,000 wallets reportedly underwater. Bubblemaps described the launch as a “bloodbath” and raised concerns about the concentration of the token supply before trading began.
This is the part of the story that tends to get lost when people focus on the political argument surrounding Hunter Biden and Donald Trump. Regardless of which political side someone supports, the financial outcome for many buyers was the same: they bought into a rapidly rising meme coin and watched most of the value disappear.
Some traders made money because they got in early and sold before the crash. Others bought during the excitement and were left holding the losses. That is the brutal nature of these markets, particularly when a famous name creates enormous attention around a brand-new token.
Was Hunter Biden Trying to Scam Investors?
Based on the evidence currently available, I would not say there is proof that Hunter Biden deliberately set out to scam investors with $LAPTOP. The project has been accused of being a rug pull, but the accusation remains disputed, and Biden has specifically denied that he or his team sold their allocations during the crash.
At the same time, I don’t think investors should dismiss the concerns simply because the project says it was not a scam. A cryptocurrency can be extremely risky and badly structured without the creator necessarily committing fraud. The thin liquidity, concentrated supply, enormous initial price spike and immediate collapse were more than enough to cause serious losses.
There is also a legitimate question about whether launching a celebrity-associated meme coin with such limited initial liquidity was responsible in the first place. If the project knew that Hunter Biden’s name would generate enormous demand, then ensuring that the market could handle that demand should have been a basic part of the launch strategy.
That is why I would be very careful about reducing the entire story to either “Hunter Biden stole everyone’s money” or “sniper bots did everything.” The available evidence is more complicated than either version.
Is Hunter Biden’s $LAPTOP Coin Legit?
$LAPTOP was a real cryptocurrency that launched on the Base network, and there is no question that people were able to buy and sell it. The problem is that being a real token does not make it a sensible investment.
The launch demonstrated just how quickly a celebrity meme coin can move from enormous hype to catastrophic losses. The project may continue trading, and the team says it intends to improve liquidity and continue developing the community, but that does not erase what happened during the first hours.
For me, the biggest takeaway is not whether $LAPTOP eventually recovers. It is how easily the launch price became detached from any reasonable measure of underlying value. There was no conventional business suddenly becoming 100 times more profitable. There was simply a new meme token, a famous name, a huge amount of attention and very little liquidity.
Conclusion
So, is the Hunter Biden $LAPTOP coin a scam? I would say the launch was a financial disaster and absolutely deserves scrutiny, but I would not present the claim that Hunter Biden personally executed a rug pull as an established fact. There is currently evidence of enormous losses, extreme supply concentration, thin liquidity and profitable early trading, but no established evidence that Biden or his team dumped their locked allocation during the crash.
What I can say with confidence is that $LAPTOP turned into exactly the kind of high-risk meme coin situation ordinary investors should be extremely careful with. It went from roughly $190–$220 at its peak to only a few dollars in a matter of minutes, leaving about four out of five reported traders underwater.
Whether you call that a rug pull, a liquidity failure, a bot-driven launch disaster or simply a spectacularly bad meme-coin trade, the end result for many buyers was the same: they lost a lot of money very quickly.
And that is probably the most useful lesson from the Hunter Biden crypto story. A famous name attached to a token can create enormous attention, but attention is not the same thing as value. $LAPTOP’s first day showed just how dangerous it can be to chase a cryptocurrency after it has already started shooting upward, especially when the underlying liquidity is nowhere near large enough to support the headline valuation.