In brief
- Hunter Biden is launching a meme coin called LAPTOP on Sept. 9 on Base, Coinbase’s Ethereum layer-2 network, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
- Founders keep 30% of the supply, vested over two years, while 20% funds a two-round airdrop specifically targeting wallets that lost money on President Trump’s TRUMP token.
- A burn mechanism tied to 30 preset events—including Bitcoin hitting a new all-time high or a Democrat winning the 2028 election—could destroy up to 30% of the supply, with tokens tied to unmet conditions donated to charity instead.
Hunter Biden is getting into crypto, and he’s doing it by cashing in on his own scandal. The son of former President Joe Biden plans to launch a meme coin called LAPTOP on Sept. 9, based on a post today on X.
Per the Wall Street Journal, Hunter Biden’s meme coin will trade on Base, the Ethereum layer-2 network—a faster, cheaper blockchain built to run alongside Ethereum—that Coinbase created in 2023.
The name isn’t subtle. LAPTOP references the laptop a Delaware repair shop handed over in 2019, whose contents the New York Post published weeks before the 2020 election, igniting a controversy that consumed American politics for years. The Journal reports Biden is personally part of the founding team, not lending his name to someone else’s project.
LAPTOP will mint 1 billion tokens total. Founders, including Biden, keep 30% of that supply, though it stays locked for six months and then unlocks gradually over two years—a vesting schedule, or delayed-release mechanism meant to stop insiders from dumping tokens the moment they launch.
Of the total supply, 20% of LAPTOP’s supply will cover charity donations, liquidity, and payments to exchange partners and market makers, plus the accounting and legal costs of running the token’s foundation
The team behind the token also plan on burning 30% of the supply based on certain criteria hitting, including Bitcoin hitting a new all-time high or a Democrat winning the 2028 election.
Another 20% of the tokens will be reserved for two rounds of airdrops—free token giveaways to specific wallets—and this is where the project gets its edge.
A giveaway aimed straight at Trump’s bagholders
Eligibility for the airdrop extends to the subscribers of Biden’s Substack and members of Andrew Callaghan’s Channel 5 mailing list. Another tranche is reserved for traders who lost money on TRUMP, President Donald Trump’s own meme coin. That’s not a small pool, considering the coin has been in a constant bearish trend since it launched.
Entities tied to the Trump Organization control 80% of TRUMP’s supply under their own multi-year vesting schedule. So both the president’s meme coin and Biden’s answer to it concentrate the bulk of their tokens in founders’ pockets.
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