Hunter Biden is entering the harmful crypto-gambling space, alongside President Trump, First Lady Melania Trump, and many other so-called influencers. Biden plans to launch a so-called meme coin, also known as a “shitcoin,” for its speculative use and potential for gambling-related harm.
Biden teased the launch Monday on X. According to the Wall Street Journal, Biden is launching the controversial cryptocurrency meme coin to explicitly target people who lost money on Trump’s own token.
That could be especially predatory.
Memecoin Called ‘$LAPTOP’
The former president’s son plans to launch $LAPTOP on Sept. 9 on Base, an Ethereum-based blockchain created by Coinbase. The name refers to his laptop that sparked political controversy ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
The project reportedly will issue 1 billion tokens. Biden and other founders are set to receive 30% of the supply, with those tokens locked for six months and then vested over two years.
Regular Americans and people elsewhere could lose significant amounts of money.
Another 20% of the shitcoin will be distributed through airdrops, including to Hunter Biden’s Substack subscribers and people who lost money holding Trump’s $TRUMP shitcoin.
Chasing Losses
In effect, Biden’s marketing strategy uses prior investment losses to recruit potential buyers into another highly speculative token.
Meme coins typically have little or no underlying economic utility and can experience extreme price swings. Trump’s shitcoin shows the risk.
After reaching more than $74 shortly after its January 2025 launch, $TRUMP was trading at roughly $2.27 on Monday, according to Forbes.
Similarly, $MELANIA peaked at $13.05 on Jan. 19, 2025 and is now around $0.11. That’s a decline of roughly 99.1%.
