Hunter Biden, son of former U.S. President Joe Biden, has announced plans to launch a cryptocurrency memecoin called $LAPTOP, referencing the infamous laptop controversy from the 2020 election. The token will launch September 9 on Base, Coinbase‘s Layer-2 blockchain, with an initial supply of one billion tokens. Biden and co-founders will hold 30%, while 20% will be airdropped to select groups including Substack subscribers and wallets that lost money on Donald Trump‘s $TRUMP memecoin. Up to 30% of the supply could be burned. The launch follows significant declines in Trump family crypto ventures, with $TRUMP and $MELANIA down substantially from their peaks.
Hunter Biden is launching a memecoin called $LAPTOP, drawing directly from the controversy surrounding a laptop reportedly left at a Delaware computer repair shop in 2019. Data from the device, including emails and personal material, later became public and fueled political debates around Hunter Biden and his father.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the token will launch on September 9 on Base, Coinbase‘s Layer-2 blockchain. The initial supply will total one billion tokens.
Hunter Biden and his co-founders will hold 30% of that supply. Another 20% will reach selected groups through an airdrop.
Recipients include Hunter Biden‘s Substack subscribers and readers on journalist Andrew Callaghan‘s mailing list. The airdrop will also target wallets that lost money buying Donald Trump‘s $TRUMP memecoin.
Up to 30% of the $LAPTOP supply could be destroyed, or burned, depending on certain events. The decision to distribute tokens to those who lost money on $TRUMP makes the political rivalry explicit.
Investors betting on President Donald Trump‘s crypto ventures have faced roughly $4.7 billion in unrealized losses. Trump and his family have profited at least $1.4 billion from their crypto businesses.
$TRUMP was trading at $2.28 after falling from its January 2025 peak of $74.34. $MELANIA had fallen roughly 98.5% since its launch to $0.113.
The Biden administration has been a vocal critic of crypto during its tenure. Hunter Biden addressed this shift, saying, “Fiat is a sham, the banking class is corrupt, decentralized digital currency and the blockchain are the inevitable future, and the incumbents will fight it to the death.”
