Hunter Biden’s LAPTOP meme coin collapsed about 98% within its first hour of trading, turning a high-profile political crypto launch into another reminder of how risky meme by coins can be.

The token launched on Base, Coinbase’s Layer-2 blockchain, and briefly traded above $190 within its first two minutes. It then crashed to around $3.70, before recovering slightly to about $4.77 an hour after launch.

Related: Meme Stock Trap is BACK: Why Retail Traders Are Falling for Same Trap in 2025

Tiny Liquidity, Huge Valuation

The most striking part of the launch was the gap between valuation and actual liquidity.

After the crash, LAPTOP still showed a market cap of about $1.6 billion, but had only around $2.5 million in pooled liquidity.

Earlier, blockchain analytics firm Arkham estimated that the token briefly reached a fully diluted valuation of $144 billion, even though liquidity at that moment was only about $48,000.

That helps explain why the price moved so violently. With very little liquidity, even small trades can create huge swings.

Token Distribution Raises Questions

Biden promoted LAPTOP as a relatively fair launch, but blockchain data showed that some tokens were distributed before public trading began.

One address linked by Arkham to the project received 100 million LAPTOP tokens, equal to 10% of total supply, seven days before launch. That address later distributed around 42.5 million tokens.

Market maker GSR also received 15.5 million tokens before trading started, while Wintermute held around 1.8 million tokens across several addresses.

Some of these tokens moved when trading opened, which raised concerns among crypto traders. However, the blockchain data alone does not prove fraud or a rug pull.

A Political Meme Coin

LAPTOP takes its name from the controversy surrounding Biden’s laptop and was partly promoted as a response to President Donald Trump’s TRUMP meme coin.

Biden said 20% of the token supply would go to community members, including some investors who lost money on TRUMP. Another 30% was connected to a programmed token-burning mechanism.

Investor takeaway: LAPTOP’s launch shows why meme-coin market caps can be misleading. A token can appear to be worth billions while only a small amount of money is actually available to trade. For investors, liquidity and token distribution matter much more than the headline valuation.