Hoskinson Mocks LAPTOP Crash as Hunter Biden Denies Rug Pull Allegations

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has responded sarcastically to the sharp decline of LAPTOP, a memecoin linked to Hunter Biden, son of former US President Joe Biden.

LAPTOP briefly surged to nearly $320 after launching on Base before losing approximately 99% of its value within hours, leaving many investors with significant losses.

Onchain data from Bubblemaps indicates that over 80% of wallets that purchased LAPTOP were in the red following the launch, and several of the token’s largest holders appear to be newly funded wallets.

After the collapse, Hoskinson posted on X, joking that LAPTOP’s “true purpose” was to eventually match the price of a used MacBook Pro.

Hunter Biden Rejects Rug Pull Claims

Hunter Biden denied that LAPTOP was a rug pull, attributing the extreme price swings to limited liquidity, technical issues, and predatory trading bots that contributed to the initial price spike.

Biden also stated that the team’s allocation was locked, that no one on his side sold tokens, and that he personally had not profited from the launch. He noted 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 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.

Hoskinson has consistently criticized politicians and their close associates for launching cryptocurrency projects, particularly targeting President Donald Trump and his family over politically themed tokens and decentralized finance ventures. He 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.

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