Hunter Biden, son of former US President Joe Biden, is set to launch a new memecoin called LAPTOP on September 9, with the token deploying on Base, the Ethereum layer-2 network built by Coinbase. The project plans to distribute up to 20% of its one-billion-token supply through airdrops, including an allocation for people who have lost money on Donald Trump’s TRUMP memecoin. But even before its launch, crypto traders have turned against the project, raising questions about another politically linked memecoin entering the market.
September 9 pic.twitter.com/QokgWLNxgL
— Hunter Biden (@HunterBiden) September 7, 2026
The name LAPTOP refers to the infamous laptop associated with Hunter Biden. The computer, which was left at a Delaware repair shop in 2019, became a major political controversy during the 2020 US presidential election. Its reported contents, including emails and deeply personal material, were widely discussed and became the subject of political debate and online memes.
Now, several years later, Hunter Biden appears ready to turn that notoriety into a cryptocurrency. He appeared to confirm the plan on X on Monday by posting the $LAPTOP ticker and September 9 launch date, following a report by The Wall Street Journal.
The token will have a total supply of one billion. Founders, including Biden, are expected to control about 30% of the supply. Their tokens will reportedly be locked for six months and then released gradually over more than two years.
Another 20% of the supply is planned for airdrops. One of the groups targeted for the distribution is wallets holding losses from TRUMP, the memecoin launched by Donald Trump shortly before his 2025 inauguration. TRUMP briefly reached a market value of nearly $15 billion but has since fallen about 97% from its peak.
The structure has led many observers to view LAPTOP as a direct political response to Trump’s memecoin. Hunter Biden has also become increasingly vocal about the Trump family’s involvement in the crypto industry. In recent comments, he criticised World Liberty Financial, the Trump family-linked crypto business, describing it as corruption on an extraordinary scale.
However, the reaction from crypto traders has been far from welcoming. Some traders have questioned why another political memecoin should attract attention, while others have openly told Hunter Biden not to proceed. The backlash became strong enough for Kraken to remove a social media post promoting LAPTOP after users criticised the exchange for appearing to promote another political token.
Base isn’t “launching the memecoin” / you don’t need CB permission or endorsement to launch a coin, there is no partnership or whatever ppl are implying AFAIK. Obviously lots of real things to criticise CB about but not sure what we did wrong here
— Cobie (@cobie) September 7, 2026
There has also been confusion over the role of Base and Coinbase. Jordan Fish, better known as Cobie and associated with Coinbase’s Base app team, pushed back against criticism aimed at the network. He said that anyone can deploy a token on Base without Coinbase approving it and stressed that there is no partnership between LAPTOP and either Base or Coinbase.
The project has also attracted some unexpected distance from people whose audiences are reportedly included in the planned airdrop. Video journalist Andrew Callaghan, for example, said that neither he nor his Channel 5 programme was involved with the coin, despite a Channel 5 mailing list reportedly being among the groups eligible to receive LAPTOP tokens.
The founders may also have another unusual mechanism for managing the token supply. Reports say they could burn up to 30% of the supply, depending on the outcome of a series of predetermined events. These reportedly include a Democrat winning the 2028 US presidential election, Bitcoin reaching a new all-time high and LAPTOP achieving a higher fully diluted value than TRUMP.
Not everyone is staying away. Token-launch platform Pump.fun was reportedly still advertising LAPTOP before the official launch, while copycat tokens carrying the same name had already appeared. That suggests that, despite the criticism, traders remain willing to speculate on the attention surrounding the project.
LAPTOP is therefore arriving with both political symbolism and a ready-made audience of crypto speculators. But the strong backlash before the first official trade shows the challenge facing Hunter Biden: attracting attention may be easy, but convincing crypto traders that the token is worth buying could be much harder.
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