Hunter Biden, the son of former U.S. President Joe Biden, launched the memecoin $LAPTOP on Base on Sept. 9. The token’s name comes straight from the “Hunter Biden laptop” episode that became a major political controversy during the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
After trading opened, $LAPTOP briefly climbed to roughly above $190 to $220, then fell to less than $2 in a very short span. The drop exceeded 95%.
The token turns Hunter Biden’s best-known scandal into a memecoin
The name itself is central to the project. In 2019, Hunter Biden left a laptop at a computer repair shop in Delaware and never picked it up back up. Emails, photos, and private messages from the device later leaked and became a major political issue ahead of the 2020 election.
The material included Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings as well as large amounts of content related to his private life and drug use. The episode was later used for years by Republicans and conservatives to attack both Hunter Biden and his father, Joe Biden. Over time, the laptop itself became a widely recognized meme in U.S. political internet culture.
Hunter Biden has now turned that history into a token. The $LAPTOP website says he has spent the last six years living inside “a story told about him by others,” and says the project is meant to reclaim control of that narrative. The token is described by the project as a symbol of “resilience, redemption, recovery.”
Heavy losses followed the launch, with supply concentration flagged before trading began
Bubblemaps said about 80% of $LAPTOP traders were in the red. It also said the token’s supply distribution was highly concentrated before trading started, creating a high risk of a fast sell-off.
The project had already run into sharp criticism from the crypto community before it went live. Kraken at one point posted promotional content tied to $LAPTOP, then deleted it after backlash. Video creator Andrew Callaghan also publicly distanced himself from the project.
Base said the token was able to deploy on the network because the chain is permissionless, and that this does not mean Coinbase or Base endorsed it. Base creator Jesse Pollak added that the $LAPTOP team had reached out to Base beforehand, but said the team deliberately chose not to help design or promote the token.
Crypto users contrasted the launch with the Biden administration’s record on the industry
ABMedia said Joe Biden’s presidency from 2021 to 2025 was one of the most difficult periods in relations between the U.S. crypto industry and regulators.
During Biden’s term, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission under Gary Gensler pursued aggressive enforcement against major crypto companies, including lawsuits over whether many tokens were unregistered securities. After Donald Trump returned to office, the new administration later withdrew those cases and policies one after another. Reuters this year also cited the Biden-era lawsuits against dozens of crypto companies by Gary Gensler as an example of why the industry worries about a possible “Gensler 2.0.”
Joe Biden himself also vetoed a congressional resolution in 2024 that would have overturned SEC SAB 121. For many people in the U.S. crypto sector, the Biden-Gensler period became shorthand for “regulation by enforcement.” Less than two years later, the former president’s son has now launched a memecoin of his own, a contrast that quickly became a target of ridicule across the crypto community.
ABMedia also pointed to Hunter Biden’s recent public challenge to Trump’s sons
ABMedia said the sense of absurdity around $LAPTOP does not come only from turning Hunter Biden’s most famous political scandal into a memecoin. A few months ago, Hunter Biden publicly named Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump and said he was willing to face them in a “cage match.”
At the time, he said he would “100%” take part if organizers could make it happen. That comment pushed the long-running political feud between the Biden and Trump families even closer to a reality-show spectacle.