Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has sarcastically reacted to the sharp collapse of $LAPTOP, a memecoin associated with Hunter Biden, the son of former US President Joe Biden.
Notably, $LAPTOP surged to nearly $320 shortly after launching on Base before losing roughly 99% of its value within hours. The dramatic reversal left many buyers facing significant losses.
According to onchain data cited by Bubblemaps, more than 80% of wallets that purchased $LAPTOP were in the red following the launch. Moreover, several of the token’s largest holders appear to be newly funded wallets.
Following the collapse, Hoskinson took to X and joked that $LAPTOP’s “true purpose” was to eventually match the price of a used MacBook Pro.
Hunter Biden Rejects Rug Pull Claims
Hunter Biden rejected claims that $LAPTOP was a rug pull. Instead, he attributed the extreme price swings to limited liquidity, technical issues, and predatory trading bots that contributed to the initial price spike.
Biden also maintained that the team’s allocation was locked, that nobody on his side sold tokens, and that he personally had not made any money from the launch. He added that the project remained focused on long-term community building and highlighted its distribution of free tokens to people who lost money on Trump’s memecoin.
However, on-chain data reported by Quartz has raised questions about that claim. According to the report, a project-affiliated multisig wallet received 100 million $LAPTOP tokens, representing 10% of the total supply, before the launch. The wallet has since sold 42.5 million of those tokens.
$LAPTOP Remains Deeply Below Its Peak
At press time, $LAPTOP was trading at $0.7791, down over 99.75% from its all-time high of $401. Its market capitalization has also fallen sharply from the nearly $80 billion valuation reached during its brief surge, although the current figure of about $283.81 million would still place it among the world’s 250 largest cryptocurrencies.
Meanwhile, Hoskinson has consistently criticized politicians and their close associates for launching cryptocurrency projects.
He has particularly targeted President Donald Trump and his family over politically themed tokens and decentralized finance ventures. Hoskinson has argued that such projects politicize an industry that should remain bipartisan, while offering limited utility and creating ethical concerns.
Therefore, while his $LAPTOP comment was clearly sarcastic, it also fits his broader criticism of politically connected memecoins and their speculative nature.