SEC Ruling Protects LAPTOP Token Investors from Federal Securities Law

A February 2025 SEC staff statement has come back to haunt Hunter Biden's LAPTOP meme token, which collapsed by 95% within 30 minutes of its launch on the Base blockchain. The same ruling that cleared the way for Donald Trump and Melania Trump's TRUMP and MELANIA meme tokens now shields the son of former POTUS Joe Biden from federal securities law.

The staff statement ruled that meme tokens are not securities, and anyone who gets burned trading them is not covered under federal securities law. This means that investors in LAPTOP, which lost an estimated $200,000 for one buyer, have little recourse against the SEC or Hunter Biden.

Despite the token's collapse from a fully diluted valuation of $144 billion to just $5 billion, the LAPTOP team blamed the volatile launch on 'predatory sniper bots' and starting liquidity that couldn't absorb demand. The team also stated that it would deploy four million tokens to seed Aerodrome pools and reduce circulating supply by about 1% in week one.