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Hunter Biden’s $LAPTOP memecoin surged to a peak price of $190.81 within minutes of its Sept. 9, 2026, launch on Base, the Coinbase-built Ethereum layer-2 network, before crashing roughly 98% within the first hour and leaving thousands of traders with losses.
The project was promoted by Hunter Biden as a way of reclaiming the laptop controversy that followed him and his family during the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
The token briefly attracted intense speculative buying after launch.
According to Arkham data cited by Decrypt, LAPTOP reached $190.81 just two minutes after trading began. At that price, its fully diluted valuation approached $144 billion even though the liquidity pool held only about $48,000.
That gap showed how quickly the token’s headline valuation could move without a comparable amount of liquidity supporting actual trading.The price then collapsed as sellers entered the market.
By the end of its first day, the token had lost most of its value.
The crash has left thousands of traders facing losses.
The Washington Post reported that blockchain analytics firm Bubblemaps found that about 80% of traders who bought LAPTOP on launch day lost money.
Bubblemaps also said more than 15,000 wallets had lost money on the token, while describing the supply as highly concentrated before trading began.
That concentration matters because a token can fall sharply when a relatively small number of large holders sell into a market with limited liquidity.
However, the crash alone does not prove that the project was a rug pull or that Hunter Biden committed fraud.
There is currently no established evidence showing that Biden personally sold tokens during the collapse.
LAPTOP’s tokenomics allocated 30% of the one billion-token supply to its founders.
Those tokens were subject to a six-month lock-up, according to the project’s disclosures. Another 20% was designated for community airdrops, including wallets that lost money on Donald Trump’s $TRUMP memecoin.
Crypto traders questioned the concentration of tokens and the broader trend of politicians and public figures using their visibility to create speculative digital assets.
The criticism intensified after LAPTOP’s rapid collapse.
Hunter Biden’s launch comes after a wave of politically linked memecoins.
Donald Trump launched the $TRUMP token in January 2025, while other political figures and celebrities have also entered the memecoin market.
These tokens can attract enormous attention because buyers are not necessarily investing based on traditional measures such as revenue, cash flow or a functioning business.
Their value can instead depend heavily on publicity, online communities and speculation.
The token’s initial price surge created a multibillion-dollar implied valuation before the market rapidly reversed.
The collapse is also being used by crypto commentators to reignite arguments about Senator Elizabeth Warren’s approach to political cryptocurrency.
A prominent crypto commentator, Digital Perspectives, argued that Warren should apply the same scrutiny to Hunter Biden’s crypto activities that she has directed toward Donald Trump’s crypto ventures.
That is a political argument, not an established finding by Congress or regulators.
Warren has been one of the strongest critics of the Trump administration’s involvement in cryptocurrency and has argued that the CLARITY Act does not contain sufficient safeguards against conflicts of interest.
In July, Warren said the revised bill still contained loopholes that could allow Trump to continue profiting from crypto.
She has also opposed advancing the bill in its current form, citing concerns about consumer protection, financial stability, national security and conflicts of interest.
There is no indication that Warren has endorsed Hunter Biden’s memecoin or that she has formally responded to the LAPTOP launch.
The political debate comes as lawmakers prepare for a September 15 procedural vote on the CLARITY Act.
The legislation is designed to establish clearer rules for digital assets and determine how responsibilities should be divided between U.S. financial regulators.
The crypto industry has strongly supported the legislation, while Warren and other Democrats have argued that the current version does not go far enough on investor protection and political conflicts of interest.
The central question is no longer simply whether politicians should be allowed to participate in crypto but it is whether the same standards should apply to politicians and their families regardless of party affiliation.
A token can attract huge attention and achieve an enormous implied valuation within minutes, even when the underlying market has relatively little liquidity.
That creates an environment where early traders can make significant gains while later buyers face substantial losses.
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