Hunter Biden’s LAPTOP memecoin suffered a collapse of as much as 98% shortly after launching, with the project team blaming automated sniper bots and a lack of sufficient liquidity. Early blockchain data from Nansen showed that several traders were facing losses in the six-figure range.

LAPTOP launched at 5 cents amid intense buying demand, but the team said the liquidity available at the time was too limited to handle the sudden influx of automated traders.

Sniper bots are automated programs that detect newly launched tokens and execute purchases within seconds, allowing them to enter the market before most regular traders. LAPTOP initially surged following its debut but quickly reversed those gains.

The project said it will add 4 million LAPTOP tokens, representing 0.4% of the total supply, to provide liquidity incentives on Aerodrome pools beginning Sept. 10.

Early buyers absorb major losses

Data from blockchain analytics firm Nansen, shared with CoinDesk, showed 46,675 buy transactions and 16,038 sell transactions during the first 24 hours.

The transactions involved 20,085 unique buyers and 8,714 unique sellers. Most buyers had not exited their positions when the data was collected.

Nansen examined five wallets and found substantial losses among some of them. One wallet had an estimated total loss of about $199,000, consisting of $171,000 in realized losses and another $27,900 in unrealized losses.

A second wallet purchased roughly 28,400 LAPTOP and had not sold, leaving it with an estimated loss of approximately $118,000.

One trader, however, was still showing a profit. A wallet that acquired around 49,700 LAPTOP held an estimated unrealized gain of about $13,000 at the time of the snapshot.

Nansen valued LAPTOP at approximately $720 million in market capitalization and about $2.1 billion on a fully diluted basis even after the crash.

Such valuations can be distorted in newly launched tokens because thin liquidity allows relatively small trades to cause substantial price changes. As a result, the implied market capitalization may not represent the amount of capital actually invested.

LAPTOP team denies insider advantage

The project also rejected claims that insiders received preferential access to LAPTOP.

According to the team, the token had no presale and provided no allocations to investors, influencers or key opinion leaders. It said the contract address, token distribution, security audit and other relevant information were published before trading began.

“Everyone had the same information, at the same time,” the project said in a Thursday blog post.

The team also reaffirmed that the founders’ 30% allocation is locked for six months before vesting over a two-year period.

Another 30% of the supply is linked to a prediction mechanism. Depending on the outcomes of specified events, those tokens will either be burned or donated to charity.

Token draws on Hunter Biden laptop controversy

The LAPTOP name refers to the laptop Hunter Biden left at a Delaware repair shop in 2019. Its contents became a recurring part of Republican attacks against his father, Joe Biden, across two election cycles.

Hunter Biden confirmed the token on X on Monday, posting its ticker alongside a montage of television news anchors discussing it. The project subsequently turned an object associated with a major political controversy into a tradable crypto asset.

LAPTOP also encountered significant resistance from crypto traders before launch, with several critics publicly urging Hunter Biden to cancel the project.