Two trading firms hired to keep Hunter Biden’s LAPTOP meme coin stable came out millions of dollars ahead after its launch-day crash, according to a report Biden released Wednesday. It does not name either firm.
The report, by Groom Lake, finds the founders never sold. It ties the crash to a thin launch pool, heavy early trading and one firm pulling its cash, with what it calls moderate confidence.
“We hired two of the biggest market makers in the business to avoid exactly this, and we gave them the capital to stock both sides,” Biden stated.
Why Did a $6 Trade Move LAPTOP More Than $7,400 of Selling?
LAPTOP, a meme coin on Coinbase’s Base network, launched September 9. Its main trading pool, which sets the price automatically, held $35,663 but only 29,885 tokens.
That imbalance meant a $6.02 purchase lifted the price 5%. Pushing it down 5% took $7,376 of selling.
Across 668 other launches the report checked, buying and selling moved prices almost equally.
The price jumped from 5 cents to $316.75 in under two minutes, then LAPTOP’s two-minute peak gave way to a 98% drop within the hour.
The “$300 billion” valuations multiplied that price by 1 billion tokens.
What Did the Market Makers Do During the Crash?
Market makers are firms hired to keep buy and sell orders flowing. According to the report, the first received $500,000 but put about $5,244 into the main pool.
Then, 84 seconds after the peak, it withdrew. Cash for sellers near the market price fell from $16,158 to zero.
The report says its positions ended $685,873 ahead, though its loan terms reserve some fees for the lender. Trading the report links to the second firm netted $2.18 million.
The team says the first firm has not explained itself. A day after launch, Biden had denied the scam claims and blamed bots. Now he wants the coins destroyed.
Biden, who called Donald Trump’s TRUMP coin “max extraction,” also targeted paid crypto promoters known as KOLs.
“Hell, I’d make it work just to piss off Don and Eric. And every KOL who called it a scam because we refused to pay them,” he added.
The founders’ 300 million tokens stay locked for six months, then release over two years. Next week, the team plans to burn most unclaimed airdrop tokens. Neither firm the report points to has been named.
