A Massive Institutional Whale Dumped a Huge Amount of an Altcoin—Its Market Value Plunged 99 Percent Today

LAPTOP, a memecoin launched in connection with Hunter Biden, made headlines in the cryptocurrency market with its sharp value drop and on-chain sell-off immediately following its launch. On-chain data shows that market maker Wintermute has begun selling a portion of the LAPTOP tokens transferred to him, while the token’s fully diluted market capitalization (FDV) has fallen by more than 99% from its peak.

Wintermute, Who Received Tokens from the LAPTOP Team, Started Selling Altcoins

According to data shared by the on-chain analytics platform Lookonchain, Wintermute acquired a total of 2.5 million LAPTOP tokens from the LAPTOP team. The company has reportedly begun selling these tokens on-chain, and so far has sold 466,255 LAPTOP tokens at an average price of $4.47. The total value of these sales is estimated to be approximately $2.08 million.

The sharp drop in the LAPTOP price reached remarkable proportions just hours after the token’s launch. According to data, within the first two hours after launch, LAPTOP’s FDV fell from a brief peak of over $300 billion to approximately $1.8 billion. Thus, the fully diluted valuation decreased by approximately 99.43%, while trading volume during the same period was recorded at around $9.6 million.

On the other hand, it was reported that two new wallets that received tokens from the LAPTOP airdrop generated over $647,000 in revenue in a short period of time. According to on-chain analyst data, these two addresses sold their tokens after receiving a total of 4,276 LAPTOPs from Hunter Biden’s airdrop contract for Substack subscribers. One wallet reportedly earned approximately $404,000, while the other earned approximately $243,000.

On-chain data also revealed an ETH transfer between the two addresses. One of the addresses transferred USDC obtained from a laptop sale to an address labeled in open sources as belonging to Safe architect Florent, leading to speculation that the wallets might be linked to Florent. However, this connection has not been definitively confirmed.

Serenity, commenting on the sharp decline in value of LAPTOP, stated that it was not surprised by the token’s drop of over 99% after its launch. Serenity argued that such token issuances do not create a positive overall outcome for individual investors and therefore does not support similar token launches.

*This is not investment advice.