The Infamy Premium: How Scandal Becomes Profit in the Digital Age

The Infamy Premium

For six years, "the laptop" was something done to Hunter Biden—an object wielded by congressional investigators, political opponents, and cable news as shorthand for his disgrace. But now, he's turned the tables, investing in a token that carries the very symbol of his downfall.

This isn't just about rebranding; it's about monetizing reputation in an era where digital platforms have made such transactions instant and global. Biden's $LAPTOP coin is not a serious investment—it's a political merchandise play—but it reflects a broader trend that's as old as America itself: the commodification of infamy.

"The economics of that are almost exactly those of a meme coin," I wrote earlier about Jesse James' mother selling pebbles from her son's grave. "No real scarcity, no intrinsic worth, and value drawn from claimed proximity to notoriety."

The Original Infamy Economy

Let's take a few steps back to a 19th-century farmhouse in Clay County, Missouri. After the notorious outlaw Jesse James was shot dead in 1882, his mother, Zerelda James Samuel, began charging visitors to tour the family home and sold pebbles from her son's grave for 25 cents, even restocking from a nearby creek when supply ran down.

Frank James, his brother, later took over and was charging 50 cents by 1910. But that's inflation for you. The economics of that are almost exactly those of a meme coin—no real scarcity, no intrinsic worth, and value drawn from claimed proximity to notoriety.

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Robert Ford went further. Having killed Jesse James, he and his brother Charley took a promoter's offer to reenact the shooting onstage, performing the killing in Kansas City, Chicago, Boston, and Brooklyn. Audiences booed them, but the hostility was the business.

This phenomenon survived into the age of mass media and its grisly obsession with serial killers. John Wayne Gacy produced at least 2,000 paintings on death row, selling them through his lawyer and a collector until his 1994 execution.

A surviving letter records him selling one "Pogo the Clown" canvas—the nickname for the killer of 33 young men and boys—to a Baltimore attorney for $50 in 1985. When it resold for $12,800 in 2022 he had been dead 28 years, and the money went to the secondary market.

Liquid Infamy

What digital platforms remove is any friction or delay. Every earlier case needed someone to build the stall at the scene, or a promoter to make tour bookings, or a collector to take a physical delivery. Online notoriety, however, arrives with distribution attached—a means that can reach millions in moments.

Shiloh Hendrix is a good example. A video recorded at a Rochester, Minnesota, playground in April 2025 showed her directing a racial slur at an 8-year-old Black autistic boy, and at the man filming her in a dispute over her own child. It went wildly viral online.

She created a GiveSendGo campaign citing threats to her family, and the Anti-Defamation League reviewed early donations and found thousands of messages containing racist, white supremacist, or antisemitic language.

In July, a jury convicted Hendrix of one count of disorderly conduct over her actions toward the man filming, acquitting her on the count involving the child. She was fined $1,000 and ordered to complete 200 hours of community service, and said she would appeal.

Her fundraiser, already doing well, surged past $920,000 toward a $1 million goal. Condemnation raised the price. The city attorney's office, noting that Hendrix had admitted the conduct, said she "has profited immensely while showing no remorse."

The Rochester NAACP noted that a separate fundraiser for the boy's family raised more than $340,000. Outrage paid both sides of the same incident, which suggests the premium attaches to attention rather than sympathy. But infamy was the bigger reward.

Biden's Reclamation

Biden's defense here is clearly one built on reclamation. The project frames itself around resilience, redemption, and recovery, and its terms tell buyers the token conveys no equity, ownership, or promise of profit.

He has said plainly that nobody should expect him to make it more valuable, and sought to contrast his project with his political opponents, specifically the $TRUMP coin. Those disclaimers reinforce his effort to present $LAPTOP as political merchandise rather than an investment.

The structure is also more elaborate than most meme coins that leap on hype and then rug-pull their unwitting marks. Of the billion supply, 30 percent goes to founders including Biden, under a six-month lock followed by 24-month vesting; 20 percent to airdrops; 10 percent to liquidity; 5 percent to a foundation treasury; and 5 percent to charity regardless of outcomes.

The remaining 30 percent sits in a prediction-linked pool tied to 30 published events, many pegged to live Polymarket markets. If an event happens, that slice is burned. If not, the tokens go to charity.

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The list of events is where the project stops being merely symbolic. Roughly 3 percent of supply rides on Trump being impeached during his term, and 1.25 percent on $LAPTOP's fully diluted valuation overtaking $TRUMP's.

Another 0.75 percent turns on $LAPTOP reaching the cover of the New York Post, the paper that broke the laptop story in October 2020. Biden has tokenized the prospect of his own coverage.

And the airdrop is more modest than the headlines suggested. The initial 10 percent splits between wallets that recorded losses on Trump's meme coin and Biden's Substack subscribers: 2 percent to the $TRUMP cohort, 8 percent to his own list.

Closing the Laptop

Does Biden's market actually exist beyond mere attention? Watch the holder count and the share held by the 10 largest wallets once the 30-day claim window closes. A token held by a few thousand addresses would look more like a merchandise drop than a broad market.

Look also to see whether any of the 30 triggers actually fire, or whether the pool drains quietly into charity. Then, in March 2027, keep eyes on when founder tokens begin vesting after the six-month lock. Is there any real value left, if there was any even to begin with?

The technology behind $LAPTOP is new, but the appetite it is appealing to—a bizarre human hunger for monetized infamy—is not. America has always bought souvenirs from its villains, outlaws, and scandals.

Zerelda Samuel sold ordinary stones her son's outlaw story had turned into artifacts. Ford sold tickets to his own worst act. Gacy sold morbid paintings through a lawyer. And Biden can sell a token to a global audience about his seedy laptop.

Or try to, at least. Perhaps most people would rather keep his $LAPTOP closed.