Former U.S. President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden has spilled the beans about his plans to launch a cryptocurrency memecoin called $LAPTOP. The name draws an interesting reference from the infamous Hunter Biden laptop controversy as the central theme.
For those unaware, shortly before the 2020 U.S. presidential election, a laptop was reportedly left at a Delaware computer repair shop in 2019 and was never collected. Data from the laptop, including emails and personal material, later became public and fueled political debates around Hunter Biden and his father.
In fact, some of the data were later confirmed as authentic. However, there was no credible evidence that Joe Biden used his political power to benefit his son’s business interests in Ukraine.
Details of Biden’s $LAPTOP
As for the $LAPTOP memecoin, according to the Wall Street Journal, the token is expected to launch on the 9th of September 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. It will also target wallets that lost money buying Donald Trump’s $TRUMP memecoin.
That 20% distribution is essentially an airdrop strategy where people can get $LAPTOP for free based on certain criteria. Additionally, there is room wherein up to 30% of the $LAPTOP supply could be destroyed, or burned, depending on certain events.
Is Biden’s crypto move drawing more eyebrows than applause?
It goes without saying that this development has caught the interest of various investors. This is because of the ongoing scrutiny around now-U.S. President Donald Trump and his family’s cryptocurrency ventures.
According to AMBCrypto’s recent publication, investors betting on U.S. President Donald Trump’s crypto ventures have faced roughly $4.7 billion in unrealized losses. Whereas Trump and his family have profited at least $1.4 billion from their crypto businesses.
Additionally, both $TRUMP and $MELANIA attracted enormous attention after launch but subsequently suffered major declines. At press time, $TRUMP was trading at $2.28 after falling from its January 2025 peak of $74.34, while $MELANIA had fallen roughly 98.5% since its launch to $0.113.
And now, the decision to potentially distribute 20% of $LAPTOP to people who lost money on $TRUMP makes the political rivalry even more explicit.
The great shift
Besides the Trump angle, the $LAPTOP memecoin is a controversy in itself, as the Biden administration itself has been a vocal critic of crypto in their entire tenure.
But now in 2026, there is a 180-degree reversal, with Hunter Biden most recently putting it best when he quoted,
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.
Final Summary
- $LAPTOP will be launched on Base, Coinbase’s Layer-2 blockchain, with 1 billion tokens initially issued.
- This comes after Trump’s crypto ventures are falling apart with $4.7 billion in unrealized losses.