People used to go on media tours to promote books. Now, they launch memecoins.

Hunter Biden is the latest celebrity to make that particular journey. After months of appearances across podcasts and YouTube channels that span an unusually wide portion of the political spectrum, Biden is preparing to launch a cryptocurrency called LAPTOP, named after the infamous computer at the center of one of the biggest political controversies of the past several years.

This development is not exactly surprising. Back in May, Biden told Candace Owens, “I believe in the meme token,” adding that he could eventually create one to build a community. By June, Biden began posting about crypto on X, which many took as a sign that the launch of some kind of crypto project was inevitable. At the time, Number Go Up author Zeke Faux was already asking how long it would be before Biden “does a memecoin scam.”

It turns out the answer was about three months.

Hunter Biden’s Redemption Tour

During his recent media run, Biden has been willing to sit down with just about everyone, including those who have spent years criticizing him on a regular basis. This included discussions with Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, and Nick Fuentes. These conversations focused heavily on Biden’s history of addiction, his recovery, the laptop controversy, and the political battles surrounding his family. Biden has said he has been sober since 2019.

Biden also had conversations with plenty of people that would not be considered right wing, such as Andrew Callaghan, Adam Friedland, Don Lemon, and DJ Vlad.

Whatever one thinks of the media tour, it clearly gave Biden a much larger direct-to-audience platform. The next logical step in the current internet economy was apparently turning that audience into buyers of a cryptocurrency that is about to be created out of thin air. But there are obvious reasons to be skeptical of that business model.

Memecoins Create Winners and Losers

Memecoins are generally speculative assets whose value depends heavily on attention, liquidity, and the willingness of other traders to buy. Their charts frequently show a familiar pattern involving an explosive rise followed by an equally dramatic collapse, leaving people who bought late with the worst part of the trade.

The HAWK token associated with viral internet personality Haliey Welch, better known as the “Hawk Tuah” girl, is one of the more prominent examples. Last year, Welch was added to a federal class-action lawsuit that alleged the Solana-based token was effectively structured as a pump-and-dump scheme, with early holders allegedly benefiting while ordinary buyers were left with tokens that rapidly lost most of their value.

Trump’s TRUMP memecoin provides an even larger example of the same basic dynamic. According to data from CoinMarketCap, the token hit an all-time high of $75.35 around the time the president was inaugurated for a second time in January 2025, but it currently trades for $2.26 at the time of this writing.

A Reuters analysis previously estimated that Trump-affiliated crypto projects generated about $2.3 billion in profits while investors in those projects had suffered roughly the same amount in losses through the end of April. That is not the same thing as saying every dollar of investor losses went directly to Trump’s family, but it does illustrate the enormous transfer of money associated from outsiders to insiders with these sorts of schemes.

The TRUMP ecosystem has also become entangled in broader allegations involving political access and crypto regulation. Justin Sun, the billionaire founder of crypto network Tron, became a major investor in Trump-linked crypto projects and was previously at the center of pay-to-play allegations surrounding the Trump administration’s SEC after the SEC’s case against Sun and his companies was settled in March.

LAPTOP Will Launch Within Days

According to The Wall Street Journal, LAPTOP will launch on Coinbase’s Base blockchain with a total supply of 1 billion tokens. 30% of the total supply is reserved for Biden and his co-founders. Those tokens will be locked for the first six months after launch, meaning the insiders cannot sell them during that period. Once the six-month lockup expires, Biden and the other co-founders can begin selling their tokens for real money, with the rest of their allocation becoming available gradually over the following two years.

The project also has a particularly on-brand plan for 20% of the supply. Some of those tokens will be airdropped to people who lost money on the TRUMP memecoin.

The remaining supply is earmarked for things including charity, liquidity, and operating expenses. The project also reportedly has provisions that could result in up to 30% of the supply being burned if certain events occur, including a Democratic presidential victory in 2028 or bitcoin reaching a new all-time high.

The charitable component is a familiar way for celebrities to soften the optics of working with speculative or downright dubious crypto projects. Matt “Fortune Favors the Brave” Damon, for example, is once again working with the crypto industry through Ripple and his Water.org charity.

Buyer Beware

For LAPTOP, things are already off to a bit of a rocky start prior to the actual launch, as Channel 5’s Andrew Callaghan felt a need to post on social media about he is not at all involved in the memecoin project. He did admit to sharing his email list with Biden, but he added that Channel 5 was able to get those email addresses removed prior to any email getting sent out from Biden’s team regarding LAPTOP. “We have not, do not, and never will advertise crypto,” read the post on Channel 5’s X account.

Trey Walsh, who has advocated for the adoption of pro-Bitcoin policies by progressives, wrote on X, “Are we allowed to say the quiet part out loud here? That Hunter is a weirdo and his redemption tour is egomaniacal and the Biden’s as a whole should still be persona non grata?”

After months of calling out Trump corruption, Hunter Biden is launching his own shitcoin called LAPTOP.

Do not buy it. https://t.co/LhjERDl20K

— Coffeezilla (@coffeebreak_YT) September 7, 2026

Others have wondered if the memecoin is seen as a solution to Biden’s financial troubles. During a December appearance on The Shawn Ryan Show, Biden said he had roughly $14 million to $15 million in debt and “no idea” how he would pay it off. He also said that nobody was “riding to the rescue for Hunter Biden.”

That does not establish that LAPTOP is intended to pay that debt, and there is no reason to assume that the project will generate enough money to do so. But the timing inevitably invites speculation, jokes, and memes.

YouTube-based crypto journalist Coffeezilla was considerably more direct with his reaction. “After months of calling out Trump corruption, Hunter Biden is launching his own shitcoin called LAPTOP. Do not buy it,” he wrote on X.