Hunter Biden said late Wednesday that he personally made no money from $LAPTOP after the Base network memecoin fell more than 95% from its opening spike. The former U.S. president’s son wrote that founder tokens are locked, blamed sniper bots and technical issues for the first print, and pointed to a fully diluted valuation still above $1 billion.
Independent on-chain records published the same day showed pre-launch transfers from a project-tagged wallet to a market maker and to an unlabeled address, and the foundation’s X account went offline within hours of the statement.
Biden’s Denial and the Locked Allocation Claim
In an X post at 20:54 UTC on September 9, Biden wrote that “available liquidity could not sustain the strong level of interest at launch,” and added: “The team’s allocation is locked. Nobody on our side sold, and nobody could have. I, personally, have not made a single dollar.” He also said the token’s FDV (fully diluted valuation) remained “over $1 billion.”
On-chain Transfers Before Launch
Public blockchain records show that a multisig tagged as a Laptop Token wallet received 100 million tokens, or 10% of the 1 billion supply, seven days before trading opened, and had distributed about 42.5 million of those tokens by launch day.
Around 15.5 million went to market maker GSR four days before the open, and GSR later moved tokens, including transfers of 9 million, 1.5 million, and 500,000 on Wednesday. Another 14.5 million went to an unlabeled address about two hours before trading started.
Pre-launch market maker inventory is common practice, and the project had reserved a slice of supply for liquidity and operations. Those transfers are not the same as the 30% founder allocation Biden said is locked, and X users attached a Community Note to the “nobody sold” post pointing this out.
Launch Day Price Action and Trader Losses
Price history from launch day is already documented in earlier Crypto Times coverage. Blockchain analytics firm Arkham said trading opened around 8:02 AM ET (Eastern Time) and peaked about two minutes later near $190.81, implying an FDV close to $144 billion against a pool Arkham put at about $48,000. The token later traded near $1.34 in the afternoon and near $1.97 later in the day.
The official Base contract remains 0xB09…6ec29. The project’s own site continues to describe $LAPTOP as a collectible with no equity, staking, or governance rights.
Trader outcomes were one-sided. Wallet clustering tool Bubblemaps posted at 15:54 UTC on September 9 that roughly 80% of wallets had lost money, with 12,151 of 15,206 traders underwater against 3,026 profitable, and 11,311 losses under $1,000. A separate breakdown of the same dataset showed 88 wallets made about $5.57 million combined, while aggregate trader P&L (profit and loss) was only slightly positive.
On-chain tracker Lookonchain flagged a $200,000 opening buy that fell to about $3,000 during the first hour, and at 01:07 UTC on September 10 flagged another wallet that spent $170,000 buying 28,448.72 tokens near $5.97 after the crash and was marked down a further 87% to about $21,000.
Foundation X Account Suspended
The project’s main communications channel then broke. At 23:21 UTC on September 9, Biden wrote that X had suspended the foundation account, that $LAPTOP was trading at an FDV of about $1.7 billion, “roughly where it’s been for the past 9 hours,” and that he was “not going anywhere.” At 01:02 UTC on September 10, he repeated that the foundation was not stepping away and pointed readers to a Medium post.
Liquidity Plan and Scheduled Burn
The Medium note is the first operational update after the dump. The foundation said the initial pool was set at $0.05 per token, that demand and front-running bots overwhelmed thin market maker liquidity, and that it began sending 4 million tokens, or 0.4% of supply, into the Aerodrome pool as incentives from 00:00 UTC on September 10. It also said two prediction events would settle as “YES,” with 10 million tokens, or 1% of supply, scheduled to burn in the first week.
The note restated that there was no pre-sale and no KOL (key opinion leader) allocation, that the 30% founder allocation is locked for six months and then vests over two years and is held at Coinbase Custody, that prediction event tokens are locked for 12 months, and that 80 million tokens are claimable by Substack subscribers who signed up before September 6, with unclaimed coins to be burned after 30 days. Independent confirmation of the burn on-chain was not available at the time of writing.
What This Sequence Adds Up To
Biden’s public line is that founder coins could not be sold and that he took no cash. Separate on-chain records document pre-launch transfers from a project-tagged wallet to market makers and to an unlabeled address.
The Foundation X account is offline. The team is adding pool incentives and has scheduled a 10 million token burn. None of that changes the product type. $LAPTOP remains a no-utility memecoin whose first-day price was set by a shallow pool and a crowded ticker.
Disclaimer: This report is for information only and is not financial advice. Memecoins can go to zero. Verify the Base contract before interacting with any token named LAPTOP.
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