Key Takeaways
- Hunter Biden plans to launch 1 billion LAPTOP tokens on Base on Sept. 9.
- LAPTOP reserves 20% for airdrops, including wallets that lost money on TRUMP.
- Hunter Biden’s project ties 30% of LAPTOP supply to event burns or charity.
Biden Takes the Laptop Story Onto Base
The token is scheduled to launch Sept. 9 on Base, the blockchain network developed by Coinbase. Biden confirmed the ticker and launch date on Monday on his verified X account after The Wall Street Journal reported that he was part of the project’s founding team.
The name refers to the Mac laptop Biden left at a Delaware repair shop in 2019. Material from the computer became a major political flashpoint during the 2020 presidential campaign, spawning years of arguments over the laptop, its contents, and how news organizations and social platforms handled the story.
Now Biden is turning that history into branding. The project website describes LAPTOP as a meme coin for entertainment and community rather than an ownership stake in a business. Its website says the token carries significant risk and could lose its entire value.
Airdrops Put Trump Investors in the Middle
The political angle goes well beyond the name. About 20% of the token supply is reserved for airdrops, including distributions to wallets that lost money trading President Donald Trump’s TRUMP meme coin.
That jab lands after a wild ride for TRUMP. The official TRUMP token peaked near $73 and reached a fully diluted valuation of roughly $15 billion after its January 2025 launch. It now trades around $2.25, roughly 97% below its high, with a market capitalization near $600 million.
For investors who bought near the top, that decline has been a tough pill to swallow. LAPTOP is effectively using those losses as part of its marketing strategy, offering tokens to some of the wallets that got clobbered by TRUMP’s token collapse.
Political Events Could Shrink the Token Supply
Another 30% of LAPTOP’s supply is connected to about 30 real-world events spanning politics, cryptocurrency, and culture. If designated events happen, the tokens assigned to them are supposed to be permanently destroyed, a process crypto markets call a “burn.”
Examples include Democrats winning the 2028 presidential election, Bitcoin reaching a new all-time high, and LAPTOP’s fully diluted valuation overtaking TRUMP. If an event does not happen, the corresponding tokens are instead slated for charity under a vesting schedule.
The setup gives LAPTOP an unusual prediction-style layer. But the project is not a traditional prediction market, and no tokens have been burned or donated because public trading has not started.
Founders Hold 30% as Copycats Flood Crypto Markets
Founders, including Biden, are allocated 30% of the supply, and those tokens face an initial six-month lock, while the project website describes a longer unlocking schedule stretching to 36 months from the token generation event (TGE).
Meanwhile, copycats are already all over the place. At least 14 distinct unofficial tokens using the LAPTOP name appeared across Robinhood Chain, Solana, TON, and BNB Chain around the time of the announcement, generating millions in combined first-hour trading volume, according to several reports on social media.
That creates an immediate risk for buyers. Older tokens also use variations of the Hunter Biden laptop name, including a Solana meme coin that is unrelated to Wednesday’s Base launch. Biden’s initial confirmation post did not include a contract address, making it easier for imitators to catch traders flat-footed.
Sept. 9 Launch Will Put the Experiment to the Test
The real test begins Wednesday. Investors will be watching whether the official Base token attracts meaningful liquidity, whether its airdrops reach TRUMP holders, and whether its event-based burn system operates as advertised.
At the same time, his father’s unofficial meme coin, jeo boden (BODEN), jumped a massive 45.7% since his son revealed the news. Another coin, an unofficial coin attributed to Hunter, hunter boden (HUNTBODEN), saw an even bigger spike of 73% over the last day. Both coins have seen a residual hype from the LAPTOP announcement.
There’s a great deal of political symbolism packed into LAPTOP, but whether that moves the needle financially is anyone’s guess. For now, the project combines Biden’s most recognizable controversy with one of crypto’s most speculative corners, and the Sept. 9 launch will show whether traders think that story is worth buying.
