[Update, Sept. 9, 3:45 p.m. UTC: Updates with pricing information in the first paragraph.]
Hunter Biden’s LAPTOP memecoin fell 95.7% in its first hour of trading on Wednesday, as the son of former US President Joe Biden officially entered the market for politically themed cryptocurrencies.
The token, issued on Ethereum layer-2 network Base, traded at $2.0977 at 3:45 pm UTC, after opening at $199.50, according to CoinGecko data. It recorded more than $13.4 million in trading volume.
Most of the top holders are wallets funded in the past 10 days, according to onchain data visualization platform Bubblemaps.
“The symbol they used to try to end me is now a symbol of resilience, redemption and recovery,” Biden said in an X post on Wednesday, responding to public backlash.
Biden also said he understood the cynicism around memecoins, called President Donald Trump’s token a “grift” and warned buyers not to expect him or anyone else to make LAPTOP more valuable.
The memecoin is promoted as an attempt to reclaim the “laptop narrative,” which centers on a MacBook that Biden reportedly left at a Delaware repair shop in 2019. The New York Post published emails and other files purported to have come from the device before the 2020 presidential election. Trump allies used the material against Hunter Biden and his father, then-presidential candidate Joe Biden.
Related: Joe Biden’s son to launch memecoin, will send to TRUMP holders: WSJ
On Monday, Biden teased LAPTOP on X with a post showing the token’s ticker, accompanied by a montage of media coverage of the laptop.
The announcement drew criticism from the likes of digital investigator Stephen Findeisen, known as Coffeezilla, who called LAPTOP a “shitcoin” and urged his followers not to buy it. X account “scupytrooples” told Biden there was “still time to walk this back.”
Base founder Jesse Pollak said in an X post that the project had contacted his team, but Base made a “conscious decision” not to help with the token’s design or promotion.
Biden did not respond to Cointelegraph’s query before publication.
LAPTOP disclosures set 2% of token supply for TRUMP token losers
Biden’s earlier criticism of the Trump family’s crypto ventures also gave traders a ready-made hypocrisy argument.
In an Aug. 21 post, Biden accused World Liberty Financial of using political influence, centralized controls and leverage to benefit its founders, while saying the crypto industry deserved better.
He has now launched a memecoin built around his own political identity, with founders allocated a chunk of the supply.
Related: California Senate passes bill to ban memecoin issuance by public officials
The project’s disclosures describe LAPTOP as a digital collectible with no utility, ownership rights, voting rights, yield or profit-sharing rights. The token has a fixed supply of 1 billion, with 350 million tokens circulating at launch.
Founders, including Biden, are allocated 300 million tokens, or 30% of the supply. Those tokens are locked for six months and then vested monthly over the following 24 months. Another 30% is tied to political, cultural and crypto predictions, with tokens burned when specified outcomes occur and released to charity if they do not.
The disclosures also outline airdrop figures, with the initial round representing 10% of the total supply. Of those, 2% is reserved for wallets that lost money on TRUMP and 8% for eligible subscribers to Biden’s “Where’s Hunter” Substack newsletter.
A separate 10% future airdrop is to be distributed at the foundation’s discretion. That means 20% is allocated to airdrops overall, while the specific TRUMP-loss allocation is capped at 2%.
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