Subscribe to our Telegram channel!
Hunter Biden, the son of former U.S. President Joe Biden, has announced the launch of his own cryptocurrency. The meme coin, called LAPTOP, will be released on September 9 on the Base platform—a second-layer blockchain network built on Ethereum that Coinbase launched in 2023. This was reported by the Wall Street Journal.
The token’s name references one of the most high-profile scandals in American politics in recent years. In 2019, Biden Jr.'s laptop ended up at a repair shop in Delaware, and shortly before the 2020 election, its contents were published by the New York Post. That story shaped the American political agenda for years to come. According to the publication, Biden is personally part of the project’s founding team, rather than simply lending his name to it.
The total supply of LAPTOP tokens will be 1 billion. The founders, including Biden, will receive 30% of this amount, but they won’t be able to use them right away: there will first be a six-month lock-up period, followed by a gradual unlocking over two years. This mechanism is designed to prevent an immediate sell-off of tokens after launch.
Another 20% of the supply will go toward charitable donations, liquidity provision, payments to exchange partners and market makers, as well as legal and accounting services for the token fund. A burning mechanism is also in place: 30% of the total supply may be destroyed depending on the occurrence of 30 predefined events, including Bitcoin reaching a new all-time high or a Democrat winning the 2028 presidential election. If a particular condition is not met, the corresponding tokens will be donated to charity.
The fate of the remaining 20% of tokens, set aside for two rounds of airdrops—free distributions of cryptocurrency—is particularly telling. Potential recipients include subscribers to Biden’s Substack and readers of journalist Andrew Callaghan’s Channel 5 newsletter. But the main intrigue lies elsewhere: a portion of the tokens will be distributed to traders who suffered losses on the TRUMP meme coin—the cryptocurrency of incumbent President Donald Trump.
There may be quite a few people eager to receive such an airdrop. Since its launch, TRUMP has been in a prolonged downtrend. At the same time, the token distribution structure of the two coins is strikingly similar: entities associated with Trump’s organization control 80% of the TRUMP supply according to their own multi-year unlock schedule. Biden Jr. appears to be deliberately mirroring this model.