Biden's son officially announces the launch of the cryptocurrency LAPTOP, is the scandal monetized or a copy of the TRUMP script?

Author: Zhou, ChainCatcher

On September 7, according to WSJ reports, Hunter Biden, son of former U.S. President Joe Biden, will launch the meme coin LAPTOP, which is scheduled to go live on the Base network under Coinbase on September 9.

Minutes after the news broke, Hunter confirmed the token name and launch date on his verified account, accompanied by footage of the media repeatedly mentioning that laptop. Subsequently, the project's official website and X account @Laptoptoken announced the Base contract address. Hunter himself also followed this account.

The name of this token is derived from the laptop that Hunter left at a repair shop in Delaware in 2019, which was later seized by the FBI. The contents of the hard drive leaked before the 2020 election, and the overseas business dealings and financial records became core materials for attacks on the Biden family in the following years. In recent years, Hunter has repeatedly mentioned this experience on Substack and social media, and this time he simply turned it into the name of the coin.

It is reported that he was convicted of a felony gun charge in 2024 and admitted to tax charges, subsequently receiving a full pardon from his father. He has also been reported to owe approximately $17 million to his former law firm. He has stated that he entered the crypto industry out of interest in technology and to make some money. Many community users pointed out that this essentially turns a political scandal into an asset.

2,000 tokens airdropped to TRUMP loss users, deflationary mechanism tied to political betting

According to official information, the total supply of LAPTOP is 1 billion tokens, of which the founders hold 30%, the prediction mechanism 30%, the first-day airdrop 10%, future airdrops 10%, liquidity 10%, foundation treasury 5%, and charity 5%. At TGE, 35% will be unlocked, corresponding to 350 million tokens, which includes the first-day airdrop, future airdrops, liquidity, and foundation treasury.

The founding team, including Hunter himself, holds 30%, with a lock-up period of 6 months followed by a linear release over 24 months. The 30% for the prediction mechanism corresponds to 30 political, crypto, and cultural prediction markets from Polymarket, where tokens are destroyed if the outcome is "yes" and donated to charity if "no." This portion of tokens will also be unlocked over 24 months after a 12-month lock-up.

Of the 100 million tokens airdropped on the first day, 20 million will be distributed to users who previously incurred losses on the TRUMP token through a partner platform, while 80 million will be aimed at users who subscribed to Hunter's Substack column before September 6. Any portion not claimed within 30 days will be destroyed. The future airdrop of 100 million tokens will be allocated at the discretion of the Phoenix Veritas Foundation.

Among the remaining portion, the foundation has signed lending agreements with market makers G20 and GSR, lending a total of 20.5 million LAPTOP tokens for market making, which counts towards liquidity distribution and does not constitute additional issuance. The token contract has been audited for security by Hacken, with no significant vulnerabilities found.

LAPTOP has no practical utility and is positioned as a purely cultural digital collectible, with its value entirely driven by community sentiment. The project does not offer equity, governance rights, or promise dividends, and the disclosure documents also state that there is no roadmap, tokens cannot be staked, and there are no buyback or price support arrangements.

When comparing the official narrative of the token economics with the on-chain reality, a significant gap is evident.

According to the contract address disclosed on the official website, the total supply of 1 billion LAPTOP tokens has been fully minted at once, with holdings highly concentrated. The top 10 addresses hold all the tokens, with one treasury address alone holding 800 million tokens, accounting for 80% of the total supply. This treasury and the contract owner are jointly controlled by a multi-signature group of three people, requiring two signatures to be effective.

The contract itself adopts the standard LayerZero OFT cross-chain architecture, with the source code publicly verified. It does not include common harvesting features such as transaction taxes, blacklists, pausing trading, or additional issuance. The cross-chain bridging function has not yet been activated, but the contract owner can later enable new entry points by configuring cross-chain permissions.

The lock-up period, vesting plan, prediction destruction, and charitable donations emphasized on the official website have not yet been written into the smart contract, essentially remaining as written commitments from the team rather than enforced constraints at the code level.

Persona discount, market attitude cautious

Within an hour of the announcement, over a dozen similarly named imitation tokens appeared on networks such as Robinhood Chain, Solana, TON, and BSC, with a total trading volume reaching millions of dollars.

According to GMGN data, the market capitalization of the popular similarly named token on the BSC network once exceeded $8 million, then fell back to around $6 million, while similar tokens on Robinhood, Solana, and Base networks also saw significant declines from their peaks.

Meanwhile, some previously popular meme coins experienced declines of over 9% to 20%, and Bitcoin, Ethereum, and SOL also saw brief declines of about 0.7% to 1.2%.

Trader sentiment remains notably cautious, possibly due to the lessons learned from the TRUMP token. The TRUMP token surged on its issuance day, January 17, 2025, sparking market frenzy, but subsequently continued to decline, with its price dropping from a high of $74.34 to $2.25, while the concurrently issued MELANIA has also fallen by 94%.

At that time, Bitcoin was at a high of about $100,000, and subsequently fell about 25% over 52 days, with a complete correction cycle lasting about 80 days, with a decline of nearly 29%. Many of the hottest Solana meme projects at that time also peaked around the issuance of the TRUMP token.

This history has led many to express that they will choose to wait and see after the LAPTOP news was announced, rather than rush to buy in at high prices.

Opinions within the crypto community regarding this token issuance have also diverged. Some believe that the temporary decline caused by the news is more due to information asymmetry and cognitive bias, with exiting funds being either risk-averse investors worried about repeating the TRUMP debacle or speculative investors hoping to replicate the wealth effect of TRUMP.

Others have pointed out that Hunter's personal influence is limited, and the advance announcement of the contract address gave on-chain bots time to position themselves, suggesting that this token issuance is likely just an opportunity for a few, making it easier for ordinary participants to buy at high prices.

In terms of public chain competition, crypto KOL Eden believes that Hunter's entry this time has turned the laptop scandal into a personal brand, and this wave of celebrity token issuance is shifting from Solana to Base, reflecting a migration of user habits. In his view, regardless of how LAPTOP's final price turns out, the Base chain has already captured traffic in this round of events.

Basically, the market consensus is that LAPTOP will not become the next TRUMP. Persona discount, lack of value capture, concentrated holdings, and mechanisms not yet on-chain combine to determine that it is more akin to a short-window attention trade rather than a token experiment that can withstand long-term scrutiny.