Hunter Biden Blames Market Makers for Only Investing $5,000 in Liquidity Despite Market Cap Surging to $100 Billion

Written by: Boaz Sobrado, Forbes

Compiled by: AididiaoJP, Foresight News

Hunter Biden transformed the 2019 "laptop from hell" incident into the meme coin $LAPTOP. Just days after its launch, the token hit a new low of about $0.30. He attributed the crash to a market-making error: the market makers only put $5,000 into the liquidity pool in the first 30 seconds. Note: As of the time of writing, LAPTOP has fallen to $0.24.

According to a Forbes report on September 14, Biden blamed the liquidity arrangements by market makers for the token's nearly 99% drop on its first day. Two days later, the price hit a new low of $0.30; on-chain data showed that about 80% of buyers were still at a loss. This was not an ordinary meme coin flash crash, but a typical case of political symbolism, shallow liquidity, and bot-driven trading.

I. From Scandalous Hardware to On-Chain Token

On September 9, $LAPTOP launched on Coinbase's Layer 2 network, Base. The name comes from the laptop that he left at a repair shop in Delaware in 2019, which ignited controversy during the 2020 election. The New York Post reported on his overseas business dealings and personal materials based on this, while Biden's camp denied the allegations, and the controversy has persisted for years.

Biden flipped this narrative. He criticized the Trump family's meme coin as a "scam," while packaging his own token as a symbol of "resilience, redemption, and recovery," stating on social media: "They turned the laptop into a weapon; I turned it into a token." The project also claimed it would airdrop to wallets that lost money on the TRUMP token. The Trump-related meme coin had previously generated about $636 million in revenue, but many retail wallets accumulated losses in the billions; Melania-related tokens also saw significant declines from their peaks. The LAPTOP token targeted this group of losers for its airdrop, effectively marketing directly to the wounds of the previous political meme coin.

The total supply of the token is 1 billion. The public plan roughly allocates: about 30% to the founding team, which will be released over two years after a 6-month lock-up; about 20% for airdrops covering TRUMP token loss addresses, Biden Substack subscribers, and friends and video journalist Andrew Callahan's email list; another 30% linked to 30 public predictions—if fulfilled, they will be burned; if not, they will be donated to charity. Predictions include the Democrats winning the White House in 2028, the LAPTOP token's fully diluted valuation exceeding that of the TRUMP token, and Bitcoin hitting new highs. The remaining portion is for liquidity, foundation operations, and charity. The project emphasizes that the token is for entertainment and community participation and does not constitute equity or asset rights.

II. Opening 30 Seconds: $5,000 Liquidity Meets Overwhelming Demand

The opening was not quiet. Some market data showed the token starting at about $0.05, surging to over $190 to $220 within minutes, with some records nearing $300. Institutions like CoinDesk pointed out that with only about $48,000 in liquidity, the fully diluted valuation was once pushed to about $144 billion. This is a typical shallow pool illusion: a small amount of trading can push up the price, but no one can clear all chips at that price.

The peak was very short-lived. Within half an hour to an hour, the price fell back to a few dollars, then dropped below $1. DexScreener and others showed that the first-day drop exceeded 98% to 99%. By the next morning, some quotes fell between $0.79 and $0.84. When Forbes followed up, the price was about $0.30, down over 99% from the intraday high.

In a video on Friday, Biden candidly stated: "I messed up. The problem was in the first 30 seconds after launch; the market makers somehow only put in $5,000 in liquidity, but the demand exploded." This became the core explanation of the incident. The project team also pointed fingers at sniper bots: the pool opened at $0.05, and thin liquidity faced off against buying bots, causing the price to be inflated and then crashed. Biden denied that the team was dumping, stating that the founders' shares were locked, and he "didn't make a dollar." The project's foundation account on X was temporarily suspended, and the response was redirected to Medium.

The on-chain picture and verbal explanations do not completely align. Tracking shows that addresses marked as market-making or related sold part of their tokens during the volatility; some analyses also mentioned that the project's multisig received about 100 million tokens (one-tenth of the total supply) before the launch and sold part of them afterward. This led to market skepticism about whether the incident was merely a "$5,000 liquidity blunder." However, existing public materials still cannot classify every sale as the team cashing out. Biden insists: the lock-up is still in place, the team has not sold, and the problem lies in the execution at launch.

III. Who Took the Profits, Who Stayed at the Bottom

Bubblemaps statistics show that among about 15,200 trading addresses, about 12,200 are at a loss, with a loss rate of nearly 80%; about 3,026 are profitable, with a few holdings unable to be priced. Most individual losses are below $1,000: about 11,300 wallets lost under $1,000; about 700 lost over $1,000; about 100 lost over $10,000; and two wallets lost between $100,000 and $1 million.

Profits are highly concentrated. CryptoSlate cited data showing that about 88 wallets collectively earned about $5.6 million. Lookonchain recorded an extreme case: a certain address bought about 2,268 tokens for $900 in stablecoins, with a cost of about $0.40, and then sold at an average price of about $111, recovering about $251,000, a return of about 278 times. Some wallets also made over $1 million near the peak. Contrarian buyers were also notable: some traders bought about 28,400 tokens at around $5.97, investing about $170,000, and their losses expanded by about 87% as the token continued to fall.

The actual trading volume in the first hour was not small. Bitquery's statistics on the real coin contract showed that within 19 hours after the launch, there were over 260,000 transactions and about 45,000 independent trading addresses, with actual turnover of about $47.59 million on the stablecoin and ETH side; the weighted average price in the first hour of trading was about $23.48, dropping to about $0.79 the next day. The paper market cap can soar to billions or even hundreds of billions in a shallow pool, but the realizable depth is only a few million or even less. This is precisely the issue Biden must explain afterward: the quote is not the market cap, and the market cap is not cash that can be withdrawn.

IV. Over 4,000 Fake Tokens, More Lively than Real Coins

While the real coin has yet to stabilize, fake tokens have already proliferated. After the Wall Street Journal reported and Biden confirmed the launch date, contracts with the LAPTOP code surged across multiple chains. Bitquery statistics showed that related contracts once exceeded 4,075, distributed across at least seven chains. Fake coins reported about $941 million in trading volume within 19 hours after the real coin's launch, with five fake tokens having reported volumes exceeding that of the real coin itself. The largest fake token on the BNB chain reported a volume close to $185 million.

Most of these numbers do not hold up to redemption. Some fake tokens showed tens of millions of dollars in trading on trackers, but actual stablecoin turnover was only a few thousand dollars. There were also addresses on the BNB chain driving about 5,500 wallets, spanning 43 different tokens for "farming" style trading. For ordinary buyers, the risk lies not only in the real coin's crash but also in clicking into the same-named fake contracts. After the real coin contract launched, the fake tokens did not disappear, and the LAPTOP on the screen remains a mix of real and fake.

The airdrop also sparked controversy. Callahan's side later admitted that they had handed over a list of fewer than 5,000 emails formed from subscriptions to the Biden team. After the token's crash, this list combined with the promotion of "giving candy to losers" led to an obvious increase in criticism in the comments section. Political meme coins rely on attention pricing, and the email list turned attention into a accountable distribution channel.

V. Remediation, Destruction, and the Unfinished Second Half

The project's post-incident remediation checklist is not complicated: invest 4 million tokens (about 0.4% of the supply) into the Aerodrome pool as liquidity incentives; claim that two predictions have been fulfilled, destroying 10 million tokens, equivalent to cutting the circulating supply by about 1%. One of the predictions is related to the artist Beeple mentioning the token. The team also stated they would deepen the order book to avoid a repeat of the "opening price of $0.05, and market makers couldn't handle the order" situation.

These actions do not change the distribution results that have already occurred. Early bots and a few addresses took away the vast majority of profits, while late retail investors were left with the vast majority of losses. The trajectory of the Trump family token's decline from its peak has not been reversed by Biden's narrative rewrite; $LAPTOP even went through the same shallow pool logic again. As of Forbes' publication, the $0.30 low has turned the "symbol of redemption" into another group of trapped wallets' cost.

The old script of political meme coins is playing out again: narratives can instantly fill quotes, while shallow pools and bots determine who leaves first. Biden wants to use this coin to counter the "weaponization of the laptop," but the market's response is colder—symbols can go on-chain, but liquidity cannot be supplemented by slogans. The $5,000 opening arrangement was enough to turn a nationwide attention into a short-term market friendly only to the earliest sellers.

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