Hunter Biden has denied reaping any financial gains from his LAPTOP memecoin following a steep drop in its price on launch day, emphasizing that neither he nor his associates unloaded any tokens.
Multiple users on X accused the LAPTOP initiative of executing a “rug pull” after the digital asset shed more than 95% of its value during its initial hour of market activity on Wednesday. Based on data from CoinGecko, the fresh cryptocurrency changed hands at $0.8562 at the time of publication.
Biden remarked in a Wednesday X statement, “The team’s allocation is locked. Nobody on our side sold, and nobody could have.” He added, “I, personally, have not made a single dollar.”
Biden attributed the erratic price movement to inadequate market liquidity and the activity of “snipers,” which refer to automated trading bots that rapidly acquire tokens the moment public trading commences.
This Base-based memecoin draws its moniker from a MacBook that Hunter Biden allegedly left at a repair facility back in 2019. Associates of Donald Trump leveraged reporting from the New York Post regarding files purportedly extracted from that machine against both him and his father, former United States President Joe Biden, during the 2020 presidential campaign.
Prior to introducing his personal memecoin, Biden criticized the digital asset ventures associated with the Trump family. In an August 21 publication, Biden stated that World Liberty Financial leveraged political clout and leverage to enrich its creators.
Biden did not provide a response to an inquiry for comment sent by Cointelegraph.
Related: Joe Biden’s son to launch memecoin, will send to TRUMP holders: WSJ
LAPTOP team announces liquidity incentives and token burns
In a community update, the LAPTOP management defended the debut by asserting that they conducted no token presale and granted zero allocations to early investors or social media influencers. They stated that the smart contract address, token distribution plan, a security audit conducted by Hacken, and a white paper were all made public prior to the opening of trading.
The group noted via a Medium post that there was “no stealth deployment, no hidden supply, and no surprise to benefit insiders.”
They stated that the initial liquidity pool debuted at a valuation of $0.05 per token, but the market maker failed to supply sufficient liquidity to satisfy market demand.
Furthermore, LAPTOP announced plans to introduce 4 million tokens—representing 0.4% of the overarching supply—as liquidity rewards aimed at Aerodrome pools, kicking off at midnight UTC on Thursday. They also outlined a strategy to eliminate 10 million tokens during the first week post-launch via their forecasting initiative, equal to 1% of the aggregate original supply.
Related: California Senate passes bill to ban memecoin issuance by public officials
The project’s disclosures indicate that founders hold claims to 300 million tokens, making up 30% of the total 1 billion token supply. Those specific assets remain locked for a six-month duration, followed by monthly vesting across the subsequent 24 months.
An additional 30% is set aside for prediction markets tied to political, cultural, and crypto developments. Tokens get permanently burned if particular predictions materialize, and are otherwise donated to charitable causes. The disclosure documents note that prediction-driven burns impact unvested tokens.
The regulatory documents allocate 2% of the collective supply toward digital wallets that suffered financial losses on the TRUMP memecoin, alongside 8% designated for qualifying subscribers of Biden’s “Where’s Hunter” Substack publication. An independent 10% portion is earmarked for upcoming airdrops distributed according to the foundation’s discretion.
Nansen tracks wallet losses as Bubblemaps flags fresh holders
Data provided to Cointelegraph by Nansen on Thursday revealed that a single LAPTOP wallet sustained an unrealized deficit of $117,800, whereas another faced a paper loss amounting to $12,300.
Two alternative wallets displayed unrealized profits of $13,100 and $1,800, respectively. None of these four monitored addresses had disposed of their LAPTOP holdings at the moment the snapshot was captured. This specific review focused on a sampling of five wallets.
Additionally, Nansen documented 46,675 purchase orders alongside 16,038 sales throughout the 24-hour evaluation window, involving 20,085 distinct buyers and 8,714 distinct sellers.
Simultaneously, the blockchain intelligence network Bubblemaps pointed out on Wednesday that 60% of the primary holder addresses for LAPTOP lacked any historical prior activity.
In a subsequent message, the platform characterized these “fresh” wallets as accounts funded within the prior 10 days, observing that the vast majority received funding directly on the day of the launch.
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Originally published at https://cointelegraph.com/news/hunter-biden-denies-profiting-memecoin-laptop-crash?utm_source=rss_feed&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss_partner_inbound.
