What Hunter Biden Learned Launching A Meme Coin

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

How do you want to split it?

SPEAKER_2 (0:01)

Actually, dinner's on me.

SPEAKER_1 (0:02)

Okay, big money.

SPEAKER_2 (0:03)

Well, I got a Venmo balance that I can spend with my Venmo Debit MasterCard, so.

SPEAKER_1 (0:08)

Well, I Venmo'd you three times last week, so it's kinda on me, actually.

SPEAKER_2 (0:12)

Yeah, you send it, I spend it.

SPEAKER_1 (0:13)

Did my money get, like, reincarnated?

SPEAKER_2 (0:15)

Yeah, it's chicken shawarma. You want it back?

SPEAKER_1 (0:18)

I can't believe you, like, ate my Venmo.

SPEAKER_2 (0:21)

Spend your balance instantly with the Venmo Debit Card. No monthly fee or minimum balance. Venmo balance, account required to get a card and use a balance. Venmo MasterCard is issued by the Bancorp Bank NA.

Scott Melker (0:30)

So, Hunter Biden launched a meme coin called Laptop Token. Yes, there's a lot to unpack here. Today, I'm sitting down with Hunter to talk about why he got into crypto, how this token actually came together, what went wrong during the launch, and why he says the entire idea was about taking the phrase Hunter Biden's laptop and finally making it his own.

We also get into the tokenomics, the market makers, crypto Twitter, politics, the Trump family's involvement in crypto, and the obvious question, can a political meme coin actually exist without becoming a grift? This is definitely not a conversation I expected to be having. Let's go.

Hunter Biden (1:25)

Let's go. Let's go. Let's go.

Scott Melker (1:28)

I'm the worst at scripts. Yeah, me too, man. They don't work. I mean, let's wing it and see what happens kind of person.

Hunter Biden (1:35)

Yeah, I know. And, you know, it's got me in trouble before, but, you know, it's a better way to live life.

Scott Melker (1:42)

I had no idea. Yeah, well, me too, in case, maybe not to the same scale, but yeah, I've gotten in some trouble too.

You've been out on the road show right now, obviously doing a ton of crypto podcasts after launching the laptop token. I'm not sure I've heard a conversation about how a meme coin actually launches, and I'm so not deep in the weeds of that conversation that I'm actually curious. So let's start with, if I want to launch Wolf Token.

Hunter Biden (2:16)

Yeah.

Scott Melker (2:16)

You know, like how, where do I even start? Like did somebody come to you and say, hey man, you should do a laptop token, or did you look at crypto and say, I have an opportunity to launch something, let's do it.

Hunter Biden (2:26)

So the way it started is number one, like an interest in crypto. And then it, and then I started to watch what the Trump, the entire Trump family was doing.

And as a believer in crypto, what I saw them doing was, I thought really harmful to everybody in the industry and the whole messaging around it. Not only because just like the inherent conflict of interest of being the sitting president of the United States of the family and getting involved in promoting something that is, you know, they're inherently like tied to incredible decisions that need to be made going forward as it relates to the regulatory environment and certainty within that regulatory environment. And so for me, as a, you know, I was kind of orange-pilled in a number of different ways well before I ever got to the idea of a meme token.

But that interest led me to say, can you launch a meme coin that is basically the exact opposite of what they did, which was pure max extraction? And the answer was yes, you can. And that's not only the intent, but I hope that's ultimately at the end of the day, which will only be, the story will only be told when, you know, two years from now, if you just watch my actions and what happens. Now, what the actual mechanics of are doing that are, number one, you gotta go talk to a lawyer. And we-

Scott Melker (4:03)

I was about to ask that. I was like, you know, you call the lawyer and say, is this okay? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Hunter Biden (4:08)

And so we went to the best firm in the country that's launched, you know, hundreds of tokens. And by the way, it's not like this is like, you know, total rocket science and so oblique that nobody can figure it out. I mean, there's 10 million, there's 10 million meme coins out there. It's not like this is like some kind of like tiny backwoods market. You know what I mean?

Scott Melker (4:28)

Right. And you wouldn't have gone on pump fun on a whim on a Tuesday. No. Yeah.