Author: Zhou, ChainCatcher

On September 7, according to WSJ, Hunter Biden, son of former U.S. President Joe Biden, will launch the meme coin LAPTOP, 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 through a post on his verified account, accompanied by media footage repeatedly mentioning that laptop. Subsequently, the project's official website and X account @Laptoptoken published the Base contract address. Hunter himself also followed this account.

The token's name comes from the laptop Hunter left at a repair shop in Delaware in 2019, which was later seized by the FBI. The contents of the hard drive were leaked before the 2020 election, and overseas business dealings and financial records became core material for attacks on the Biden family in the following years. Hunter has frequently mentioned this experience on Substack and social media in recent years, and this time simply named the coin after it.

It is reported that he was convicted of a gun felony in 2024 and admitted to tax charges, subsequently receiving a full pardon from his father, and it was also revealed that he owes approximately $17 million to his former law firm. He has stated that he entered the crypto industry out of interest in the technology and to make some money. Many community users have pointed out that this essentially turns a political scandal directly 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, with the founders holding 30%, prediction mechanism 30%, airdrop on the first day 10%, future airdrops 10%, liquidity 10%, foundation treasury 5%, and charity 5%. At TGE, 35% will be unlocked, which corresponds to 350 million tokens, relating to the first day airdrop, future airdrop, liquidity, and foundation treasury.

The founding team, including Hunter himself, holds 30%, which will be locked for 6 months and then released linearly over 24 months. The 30% for the prediction mechanism corresponds to 30 political, crypto, and cultural prediction markets from Polymarket, with the outcome resulting in the corresponding tokens being destroyed if affirmative, or donated to charity if otherwise; this portion of tokens will also be locked for 12 months before being released over 24 months.

Of the 100 million tokens on the first-day airdrop, 20 million tokens will be distributed to users who previously suffered losses on the TRUMP token through a cooperative platform, while 80 million tokens will be for users who subscribed to Hunter's Substack column before September 6, with any unclaimed portion after 30 days being destroyed. The future airdrop of 100 million tokens will be distributed at the discretion of the Phoenix Veritas Foundation.

In the remaining portion, the foundation has signed loan agreements with market makers G20 and GSR, lending a total of 20.5 million LAPTOP tokens for market making, which will count towards liquidity distribution and does not constitute additional issuance. The token contract has passed a security audit by Hacken, completed in April 2026, with no significant vulnerabilities found.

LAPTOP does not have any utility and is positioned as a pure cultural digital collectible, with its value entirely driven by community sentiment. The project does not provide equity, governance rights, or promise dividends, and the disclosure document also states that there is no roadmap, the tokens cannot be staked, and there are no buyback or price support arrangements.

When looking at the official narrative of token economics alongside the on-chain reality, there is a clear discrepancy between the two.

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 high concentration of holdings. 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 agreement among the same group of three people, requiring two signatures to take effect.

The contract itself adopts the standard LayerZero OFT cross-chain architecture, with its source code publicly verified, not including common extraction-type features such as transaction taxes, blacklists, pausing trading, or additional issuance. The cross-chain bridging feature is currently not enabled, but the contract owner can open new entry points by configuring cross-chain permissions later.

The lock-up period, allocation plan, prediction destruction, and charitable donations emphasized on the official website are not currently written into the smart contract—essentially, they remain a written commitment from the team rather than a coded compulsory constraint.

Character discount, market attitude remains cautious

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

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

Trader sentiment has noticeably remained cautious, possibly due to lessons learned from the TRUMP coin. The TRUMP coin surged on its launch day, January 17, 2025, causing market frenzy, but has since continued to decline; its price has dropped from a high of $74.34 to $2.25, with the concurrently issued MELANIA also down by 94%.

At that time, Bitcoin was around the $100,000 high, and subsequently fell about 25% over 52 days, with a complete correction cycle of about 80 days, dipping nearly 29%, and many of the hottest Solana meme projects at the time peaked around the launch of the TRUMP coin.

This history has led many to express that they will choose to observe first rather than rush to chase the high following the LAPTOP news.

Opinions within the crypto community regarding this coin release have also diverged. Some believe that the temporary downturn brought about by the news stems more from information asymmetry and cognitive bias, with departing funds primarily consisting of those fearing a repeat of the TRUMP scenario as risk-off positions and others speculating in hopes of replicating the wealth-generating effect of TRUMP.

Others pointed out that Hunter's personal influence is limited, compounded by the early release of the contract address giving on-chain bots time to set up positions, suggesting that this coin release is likely just an opportunity for a small number of people while ordinary participants are more likely to enter at a high point.

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; the current wave of celebrity coin launches 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. Character discount, no value capture, high concentration of chips, and mechanisms not yet on-chain, these points combined dictate that it is closer to a fleeting attention trade rather than a token experiment that can withstand long-term scrutiny.