Hunter Biden’s laptop controversy gets a memecoin afterlife

LAPTOP, a memecoin launched by Hunter Biden, suffered a dramatic decline in its debut hour on Base, falling by roughly 95.7% after an opening price near $199.50 and trading around $4.36 by 13:00 UTC, according to CoinGecko. The token nonetheless recorded over $3 million in trading volume during the early session. Biden used social posts to frame the coin as a reclamation of the so-called "laptop narrative" and warned investors not to expect anyone to guarantee price gains.

The token’s public disclosures define LAPTOP as a collectible without utility, ownership or governance rights, yield, or profit-sharing. The supply is fixed at 1 billion tokens, with 350 million entering circulation at launch. Founders — including Biden — were allocated 300 million tokens (30% of supply); those founder tokens are locked for six months and then vest monthly over two years. Another 30% is linked to a system of political, cultural and crypto predictions, with tokens slated to be burned if specified outcomes occur or sent to charity if they do not.

Airdrops account for 20% of the total supply, split into an initial 10% and a discretionary future 10%. The initial round reserves 2% of total supply for wallets that lost money on TRUMP and designates 8% for eligible subscribers to Biden’s "Where’s Hunter" Substack. The disclosures therefore cap the specific allocation for TRUMP token losers at 2% of the supply.

The launch drew immediate criticism from crypto commentators who urged caution and attacked the token as a speculative "shitcoin," and from at least one X user who encouraged Biden to reconsider. Base founder Jesse Pollak said the team had been contacted by the project but that Base chose not to assist in designing or promoting the token. Observers also noted Biden’s earlier public criticisms of the Trump family’s crypto ventures, which has added a layer of political debate to the memecoin rollout.