Hunter Biden said the LAPTOP memecoin he helped launch was not a rug pull, describing it instead as an effort to mock what he sees as grift in politically charged crypto projects. In his words, 「Trump’s coin was max extraction, and I wanted to troll every grift like it,」 he wrote while explaining the launch and what followed.
Biden, the son of former US President Joe Biden, published a detailed account of the token in a series of X posts on Wednesday. The memecoin, launched last month, takes its name from the laptop that became a major political flashpoint ahead of the 2020 US presidential election.
Founder-linked wallets holding 300 million tokens have not moved, Biden says
Biden said blockchain data shows that 300 million $LAPTOP tokens in wallets tied to the founders 「haven’t moved since launch.」
He also said the price chart quickly looked like 「every celebrity rug ever」 after the Sept. 9 launch. Still, he argued that the main beneficiaries were not the founders but two unnamed market makers, which he described as 「two professional trading firms」 hired by the project.
According to Biden, those firms pulled funds within seconds of the token’s peak, which he put at about $317.
He said one market maker made $686,000 from liquidity positions on decentralized exchanges. The other, he wrote, 「took in about $2.18 million more than it spent」 through trading.
Launch report on project website showed similar figures
Comparable data appeared in a launch report posted on the memecoin’s website and prepared by Groom Lake, an intelligence consultancy based in Delaware.
The report said: 「The money for sellers was pulled right after the peak. Eighty-four seconds after the price topped out, Market Maker 1 withdrew its money. The cash available to people trying to sell near the current price dropped from $16,157 to zero.」
Biden said he had planned to commit 5% of the token supply to charity. He also wrote that he remained motivated to keep the project going 「just to piss off Don and Eric,」 referring to Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, and 「every KOL who called it a scam because we refused to pay them.」
The token name comes from the Biden laptop controversy
The memecoin’s name is a reference to Hunter Biden’s laptop, whose existence and contents drew heavy media attention before the 2020 election, when Donald Trump was running against Joe Biden.
The laptop still features heavily in messaging from many right-wing figures. It has also been the subject of two lawsuits filed by Biden over privacy law issues.
Biden has also been publicly critical of the Trump family’s crypto company World Liberty Financial. In August, he called it 「corruption at a scale we’ve never seen.」 Trump, for his part, has faced criticism for launching Official Trump (TRUMP) shortly before taking office in January 2025. That token has drawn its own rug pull and corruption accusations.
Biden said founder-held LAPTOP memecoins will remain locked for six months after launch. He added that the team will continue burning unclaimed tokens from airdrops.
Fresh scrutiny lands on Trump’s memecoin events
Whether the LAPTOP token was meant as satire, a joke, or a direct jab at the Trump family, the episode could bring added attention to the president’s crypto ventures as he prepares to appear at another event for holders of his memecoin.
Last week, the team behind TRUMP said the president will appear at his golf club in Washington, DC, on Nov. 22. The event is set to include three unnamed speakers and the top 185 tokenholders for a dinner.
Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group, estimated that investors in the TRUMP memecoin have lost $3.2 billion since the token’s 2025 launch.