YouTuber Assures Fans Their Data Is Safe After ‘Homie’ Hunter Biden’s Meme Coin Crash: ‘Should Have Asked More Questions’
YouTuber Andrew Callaghan quickly took to social media to assure his fans their data was safe after he shared some contact information from an email list with Hunter Biden for the launch of a meme coin that crashed within a few hours.
Callaghan, who hosts the popular Channel 5 and describes Hunter Biden as a “homie,” posted a video on Wednesday night shortly after Hunter Biden’s meme coin, called “$LAPTOP” in a nod to his own infamous laptop scandal, dropped 95% within just a few hours of trading.
Callaghan told his followers:
I just want to reiterate, I have nothing to do with it, and not a single one of our subscribers ever received a promotional email about it. I made a vague statement about this whole thing a couple days ago that I think at this point needs some clarification, because I’ve seen some fans and supporters saying stuff about how they feel like their private data was compromised, which I can assure you is not true.
Callaghan broke down his association with Biden’s meme coin, explaining Biden reached out recently about wanting to use some of Callaghan’s email list to help with his launch. Callaghan said he was unaware of exactly what the product was and he is not a fan of meme coins.
He said:
He says, Trump scams his fans. I wanna get back to Channel 5 fans cause they’ve given back to me. So I said, sure, I mean, what is it exactly? The specific verbiage he used is all they have to do is click a link and claim the money to pay the rent, to pay their bills, to buy their groceries, whatever. So he asked me, hey, do you mind sending over an email list of some of your supporters so that I can tell them about this free promotion.
Callaghan said he ended up giving an email list of less than 5,000 people on it, pulled from a list of people who sign up on his merchandise website for promotional offers.
Callaghan called the meme coin business “very predatory” and clarified that he did not sign off on any meme coin or product.
He added that Hunter Biden apologized profusely, corrected publications saying Callaghan was directly involved, and agreed to delete the emails given over.
Callaghan, who has interviewed Biden on his show, admitted he should have asked more questions.
He said:
If I had known that Hunter was going to try to sell any kind of product to the fanbase, especially in the crypto realm, I never would have given him access to that list. It’s my bad. I should have asked more questions. I don’t know. I’ve been working every day for the past 60 days since all of you guys donated to our fundraiser, been working hard every single day trying to keep that promise of taking this thing all the way up and really expanding the coverage worldwide. So I appreciate you guys. I guess I just, like, it just — I was stressed out and I just figured, yeah, that sounds fine. I didn’t really put too much thought into it. I’ll think twice before doing something like that in the future. Sorry for all this.
Hunter Biden pushed back on coverage of his meme coin’s launch, citing a number of reasons for the massive swing in value.
“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,” he wrote in a lengthy X message.
The meme coin launched on Wednesday and saw wild swings in its value, at one point reaching over $190, jumping quickly from its initial price of $37. It’s now being traded below $1.
Biden’s team is blaming “predatory sniper bots.”
“The initial LAPTOP pool launched at $0.05 per token into significant demand, making it a target for predatory sniper bots, which are automated programs that target cheap tokens in trading pools,” a statement on Medium reads. “The market maker’s initial liquidity was insufficient to meet this demand, and resulted in a sharp price spike up and down before liquidity could catch up.”
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