How much you'd have if you invested $1,000 into Hunter Biden's crypto meme coin
Hunter Biden, the son of former U.S. President Joe Biden, launched his very first cryptocurrency coin this week, yet investors won't have reaped the benefits as its valuation tanked just hours after release.
Situations like this unfortunately aren't a rarity in the cryptocurrency world, as countless 'meme coins' are launched with little sustained success, but the presence of Hunter Biden's name has made this particular situation something that many are unhappy about.
Named '$LAPTOP', the meme coin officially launched on September 9 at a price of $222.75-per-coin – the current peak – with the valuation dropping significantly within a matter of hours.
Investing $1,000 into $LAPTOP the moment it dropped would leave you with roughly 4.48 coins, yet at the current price of just $0.63, you'd be left with only $2.82, meaning you've effectively lost all of your money in no time at all.
Hunter Biden's meme coin tanks after launch
Understandably the reaction to Hunter Biden's crypto coin has been largely negative, with people accusing the former president's son of orchestrating a 'rug pull' — when the creator dumps their holdings at the coin's peak value, subsequently crashing the price and jeopardizing other investors.
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It took just an hour for the coin to go from its peak valuation to a single-digit figure, and while many crypto enthusiasts have learned to stay clear of investments like these over the years, it still has threatened Biden's somewhat rejuvenated reputation as a result.
"Hunter Biden spending months trying to recreate his image to ultimately just do a crypto scamcoin is amazing," wrote one user on X, with another adding in the replies that this scheme was "such a horrible way to use up your social capital."
How has Hunter Biden responded to the backlash?
Hunter Biden has addressed the backlash and accusations following the release of $LAPTOP, attempting to quell concerns with a new statement on X.
"As you may have seen, the LAPTOP memecoin saw a sharp swing in token price during its first hours of trading. The headlines are all the same. Token down 99%. Rug pull. Biden Crime Family. The list goes on. This is far from the truth," Biden wrote.
"The reality is that available liquidity could not sustain the strong level of interest at launch. Technical issues coupled with predatory 'snipers', who seek to beat liquidity providers to market, caused a spike in price, which has since stabilized to healthy levels."
While the notion that the current $LAPTOP price is 'healthy' might seem insulting to investors who have lost almost all of their money, it does reflect the status of many other similar meme coins who have a far lower per-coin price that's settled over time, whether you believe the explanation for the significant drop or not.
Biden also claimed that the tokens allocated to the team behind LAPTOP are 'locked', adding that "nobody on our side sold, and nobody could have. I, personally, have not made a single dollar."
As reported by QZ, however, a multisig wallet tagged by Arkham as belonging to the team behind the Laptop Token project was sent 100 million tokens (10% of the total supply) a week ago, and has since sold around 42.5 million of that.