Is Hunter Biden's $LAPTOP Coin a Scam? He Says the Wallets Prove It Isn't

Hunter Biden says $LAPTOP was intended as an alternative to Trump- and Melania-branded tokens, which he characterized as designed for “max extraction.” He said $LAPTOP allocated 50% of its supply to the community and 30% to insiders, compared with an 80% insider allocation in the Trump token. Biden describes the project as “virtually unruggable,” intended to distribute tokens broadly and support charities, including causes related to recovery and addiction. He rejects accusations that it is a scam, arguing that on-chain wallets and token flows show the team has not taken project funds for personal use.

Biden said 300 million founder-allocation tokens have not moved and will not move before vesting. The founder allocation has a six-month lockup, followed by linear vesting over 18 months. He said no foundation money has gone into insiders’ pockets, and identified himself and two other Americans as the project’s insiders. He challenged critics to show money he had put in his own pocket. Those are Biden’s claims; he said the relevant information was disclosed on the project website and is visible on-chain.

He attributed $LAPTOP’s launch-price surge to what he called a market-maker error that was later acknowledged internally. He said market makers had 15 million tokens designated for decentralized exchanges but supplied about 29,000 instead of 5 million, and used $5,000 rather than the available $500,000 in real money. According to Biden, a $6 purchase multiplied the coin’s market capitalization by five, while its fully diluted valuation jumped from $50 million to roughly $316–317 billion in under a minute. He called that valuation fictional and unrelated to real money, and said the coin later traded around seven to eight cents.

Biden said the team had expected a Coinbase listing on launch day but instead launched on decentralized exchanges, where it anticipated attention from investors, snipers and other bad actors. He declined to name the market makers, citing confidentiality, and said he could not control any fraud they may have committed at the time. He nevertheless accepted responsibility for the launch and said he should have discussed the project more before it went live. He said the team would rework the launch and continue seeking centralized-exchange listings.

A prediction market is part of the project’s proposed charitable mechanism, Biden said. It covers 30 political and crypto outcomes extending over two years and into parts of 2029. When a prediction comes true, the corresponding tokens are burned; if it does not, the corresponding share goes to charity. The charity allocation has a 5% minimum and could reach 35%, though Biden estimated it would likely be 5% to 15% after some predictions had resolved.

Biden said he launched $LAPTOP partly to troll Donald Trump and draw attention to what he sees as Trump’s failure to support crypto and harm to the crypto community. He described an airdrop for people who lost money buying the Trump meme coin as part of that effort, and the token as a way to speak directly to crypto users. He plans to remain involved beyond the six-month lockup and continue planned events, but said he has no crypto holdings or coins to discuss and will wait six months before deciding whether to participate more actively. He said he still has much to learn, but does not regard $LAPTOP as a fly-by-night operation.

The broader discussion presented crypto as a possible way to lower barriers to global payments: Biden cited international remittance fees of 15% and the possibility of farmers reaching open markets. He accused Elizabeth Warren of siding with banks by focusing on crypto’s potential for anonymous, nefarious activity, while arguing that banks profited first from newly printed money and robbed the public of trillions in 2008; he cautioned that he might be reducing her argument unfairly and said he would raise the issue with her directly. Another speaker argued that lawmakers’ limited understanding contributes to reluctance on crypto legislation and predicted the Clarity Act would be difficult to pass over the next two years, even under Democratic control of Congress. The episode also touched on blockchain’s use for verifying art authenticity, with a speaker saying his paintings are registered through Fair Start and on the blockchain.