What Is LAPTOP? Hunter Biden's Meme Coin Targeting TRUMP Holders

LAPTOP is a meme coin named after the personal computer that has trailed Hunter Biden through American politics since 2020. A Delaware repair shop handed the machine over in 2019, and the New York Post published its contents weeks before that year's presidential election, setting off years of investigations and conspiracy theories.

The Wall Street Journal first reported the launch plans on September 7, 2026. Biden confirmed the ticker hours later in a tweet carrying a short video of news outlets discussing the computer, closing on the word $LAPTOP in white type on black, before expanding on the rationale behind the token in a subsequent post .

For years, Trump and right-wing media have been asking, “Where’s Hunter? Where’s Hunter?” Well, here I am. Clear, strong, seven years sober, and with a lot to say.

By now, you may have seen the article in the Wall Street Journal that I’m launching a meme coin called $LAPTOP .…

— Hunter Biden (@HunterBiden) September 8, 2026

LAPTOP is a token issued on Base , the layer-2 network that Coinbase built on top of Ethereum in 2023. A layer-2 settles transactions on a separate chain before posting them back to Ethereum, which makes fees cheaper and confirmations faster than transacting on Ethereum directly.

Meme coins carry no claim on revenue, assets or governance. They trade on attention, and most fall sharply within days or hours of launching.

Biden is part of the founding team rather than an endorser lending his name, the Journal reported. The team declined to comment to the newspaper.

One billion LAPTOP tokens were issued. The Journal , citing people familiar with the matter, reported the following split:

An airdrop is a free distribution of tokens to wallets that meet set criteria, used to seed holders at launch. Burning means sending tokens to an address nobody controls, permanently reducing supply.

The burn conditions include a Democrat winning the 2028 presidential election, Bitcoin setting another all-time high, and LAPTOP's fully diluted valuation passing that of TRUMP. Where an event does not resolve as specified, a proportionate share of those tokens goes to charity instead. Biden has said a further 50 million tokens go to charity whichever way the conditions land.

One tranche is reserved for wallets that lost money on TRUMP , the meme coin launched by U.S. President Donald Trump in January 2025. TRUMP peaked near $75 shortly after launch and traded around $2.24 in September 2026, a decline of roughly 97%. Biden put the collective losses at close to $3.8 billion across nearly a million wallets. A coin tied to first lady Melania Trump followed a similar path.

The remaining eligible wallets belong to subscribers to Biden's Substack and to a mailing list curated by video journalist Andrew Callaghan. Callaghan has said in a statement that he and his Channel 5 program have no involvement, adding that they "do not believe crypto is a legitimate investment."

— Channel 5 (@Channel5iveNews) September 7, 2026

LAPTOP went live on Base at 8am ET on September 9, 2026. Blockchain intelligence firm Arkham recorded a peak of $190.81 two minutes later, a price implying a fully diluted valuation near $144 billion against a liquidity pool holding $48,000.

The distance between those two figures set up what followed. The token shed about 90% of its value within 30 minutes and traded near $4.77 an hour after launch. By that afternoon it changed hands around $1.97, down almost 99% from its high, for a market capitalization of roughly $780 million.

Timing separated the winners from the losers by seconds. One wallet bought 9,124 LAPTOP at launch and sold minutes later for about $1.18 million. Another spent roughly $200,000 near the peak and held less than $3,000 an hour afterwards.

Biden had disclaimed any responsibility for the token's price the night before. "You should not expect me or anyone else to make this token more valuable for you," he wrote, casting the laptop as a symbol of recovery and the token as a way of saying so. Answering critics hours later, he wrote that they had "PTSD from Trump, Melania, Kanye, Lil Pump, and Andrew Tate's memecoins."

Biden, 56, is a disbarred former attorney and the surviving son of Joe Biden, the 46th U.S. President. A Delaware jury found him guilty of three felony firearm offenses in June 2024, and he pleaded guilty to nine federal tax charges that September. His father pardoned him in December 2024, before he was sentenced in either case.

Biden said on a podcast in November 2025 that he was facing $17 million in debt from his legal fees. His former law firm, Winston & Strawn, sued him in Washington, D.C. over unpaid bills, and an April 2026 filing from his attorney told the court that Biden "lives abroad" and cannot afford to pay.

Biden gave his own reasons for entering crypto in a 2026 interview with Tucker Carlson, saying he is interested in the technology and wants "to make some money."

LAPTOP trades on Base, so any decentralized exchange or wallet supporting that network can reach it. Meme coin platform Pump.fun promoted the token ahead of launch, advertising 0.1% trading fees, in a since-deleted tweet.

Tokens using the LAPTOP ticker appeared on several other networks within minutes of Biden's announcement, none of them connected to the project. Check the contract address against an official source before trading.

Opening day followed the path of the political tokens before it. Celebrity meme coins reliably draw a fast first wave of buyers regardless of sentiment toward the person attached, then struggle once that wave passes and insider supply unlocks. Hailey Welch's Hawk Tuah token reached a $491 million market capitalization before losing more than 90% of it.

Most meme coins go to zero, and do it fast, Decrypt argued in a 2024 survey of the market. Liquidity is limited, and the developers issuing tokens tend to extract it rather than reinvest.

Three mechanisms in LAPTOP's design run on longer clocks than its first day: the staggered airdrop rounds, the 30-event burn schedule, and the lock on founder tokens. That lock expires in March 2027.

Editor's note: This story was originally published on September 8, 2026, and last updated with details of the token's launch on September 9, 2026.