A new political meme coin named LAPTOP debuted on Wednesday morning and suffered a rapid pump-and-dump cycle, echoing the volatile trajectory of previous celebrity and political tokens.
Launched on Base—Coinbase's Ethereum layer-2 network—at 8:00 AM ET, the token reached a peak of $190.81 just two minutes later, according to blockchain intelligence firm Arkham. At its height, the token's fully diluted valuation briefly touched $144 billion against a liquidity pool holding only $48,000.
The vast gap between the valuation and tradable liquidity triggered an immediate sell-off. Within 30 minutes, LAPTOP lost approximately 90% of its value, and by the one-hour mark, it was trading near $4.77. By the afternoon, the token stabilized in the low single digits around $1.97, marking a decline of nearly 99% from its intraday high.
On-chain tracking captured starkly contrasting outcomes for early market participants depending on execution timing. One trader who acquired 9,124 tokens after pulling $249,800 from Binance sold most of their position minutes later for roughly $1.18 million. Conversely, another trader spent approximately $200,000 to buy 919 tokens near $218 each, leaving a position valued at less than $3,000 an hour later.
Despite the sharp decline, LAPTOP maintained a market capitalization of $780 million and a fully diluted valuation of $2.2 billion by the afternoon, placing it among the top 100 crypto assets by market capitalization due to its thin trading volumes and remaining tokenomics mechanisms, which include a six-month lockup on founder tokens, a burn schedule, and staggered airdrop rounds.
