The Hunter Biden Meme Coin Lost 98% of Its Value in 1 Hour. Is the Meme Coin Craze Finally Over?

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The rise and fall of Hunter Biden's Laptop (LAPTOP -9.55%), the meme coin backed by Hunter Biden, was dramatic and quick. Within an hour of launch, it had already collapsed in value by 98%. Crypto investors were wiped out across the board.

Unfortunately, this scenario continues to play out over and over again in the crypto world. Lured by get-rich-quick meme coins, most investors end up losing everything. So why are people still investing in meme coins?

Won't get fooled again

What made the collapse of LAPTOP so stunning was that Hunter Biden had specifically positioned it as superior to the Official Trump (TRUMP -0.48%) meme coin. And it even promised to help reimburse the significant losses suffered by TRUMP investors by airdropping them free LAPTOP tokens.

Everybody was going to make money on this, right? Unfortunately, the same scenario played out as in January 2025. Back then, buoyed by the pro-crypto euphoria surrounding the incoming Trump administration, crypto investors were willing to buy just about anything Trump-related that they thought could skyrocket in value.

However, the TRUMP coin turned out to be a disaster, quickly losing most of its value in the course of a single weekend. Today, it trades 97.4% below its all-time high.

Why do people keep investing in meme coins?

Five years ago, there was a similar type of speculative mania around Dogecoin (DOGE -1.97%), which was the first meme coin to gain widespread public recognition. That led to meme coin mania in 2020-2021, when investors were buying Dogecoin and Shiba Inu (SHIB -0.47%) hand over fist in hopes of making massive amounts of money in a very short period.

Surely, some did. There are some examples of retail investors who became crypto millionaires overnight. But everybody else lost money. Today, Dogecoin is trading nearly 90% below its all-time high from 2021, while Shiba Inu is trading 94% below its all-time high. If you bought either of these meme coins, the chances are high that you are currently sitting on massive unrealized losses.

And it's easy to see why. Meme coins are backed by nothing more than hype and speculative fluff. The ones that really go viral are the ones -- such as LAPTOP or TRUMP -- that have a high-profile frontman to help draw crowds. The only people who make money are the ones who get in early and cash out early.

In the case of the LAPTOP meme coin, this meant you had to get in and out in less than an hour. Being just a couple of minutes late meant that you lost everything. Currently, LAPTOP is down 99.97% from its high of $401.

That doesn't sound like an investment to me. Instead, it sounds like paying admission for an overpriced one-hour entertainment spectacle. Which, at the end of the day, is all that meme coins were ever intended to be.

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