A new meme coin named LAPTOP ($LAPTOP) experienced a sharp 99.2% collapse within hours of its launch on the Base network, falling from an intraday high of $199.51 to trade near $1.61.
The token's launch followed an announcement by Hunter Biden, who posted on X regarding the project. The coin's name references the laptop that entered public view in October 2020 following a New York Post report. Prior to trading, crypto investigator Stephen Findeisen, known as Coffeezilla, publicly urged audiences to avoid the token.
Ahead of the official release, more than a dozen counterfeit LAPTOP tokens emerged across the Solana, BNB Chain, and TON networks following a Wall Street Journal report. None of these imitations carried an official contract address. Solidus Labs has previously noted that the Base network has faced challenges with scam tokens, recording over 500 such tokens in its initial weeks following its 2003 launch.
On its first day, CoinGecko reported that LAPTOP reached a market cap near $560 million and a fully diluted valuation close to $1.6 billion, accompanied by approximately $5.2 million in 24-hour trading volume. The token opened with about 35% of its supply unlocked, with the remaining balance scheduled for release through cliffs and vesting over a 36-month period.
The token's distribution included setting aside 20% of the 1-billion-token supply for an airdrop directed at wallets that lost money on Donald Trump’s TRUMP coin, as well as subscribers to a Substack and a mailing list run by video journalist Andrew Callaghan. Another 30% of the supply was allocated to the founding team under a six-month lock and roughly two-year vesting schedule.
Analytics firm Lookonchain reported instances of significant early losses, highlighting a wallet that spent $200,000 on LAPTOP near its peak, which subsequently dropped in value to about $3,000. Public Citizen estimates indicate that Trump-linked crypto projects have left investors billions underwater, with the TRUMP meme coin accounting for a substantial portion of those losses.
