{"text":[[{"start":8.5,"text":"Hunter Biden’s laptop generated years of political fodder, but his memecoin $LAPTOP crashed in a flash on Wednesday, losing 98 per cent of its value within minutes of its launch."}],[{"start":20.8,"text":"Biden said on social media that his memecoin — which is a digital token that has no inherent financial value — was intended to help “each other and our country to get back up”. He went to pains to differentiate his endeavour from those launched by the Trump family and called the $TRUMP memecoin a “grift”."}],[{"start":38.6,"text":"“The symbol they used to try to end me is now a symbol of resilience, redemption and recovery,” he said in a post on X."}],[{"start":46.353,"text":"Yet he added: “You should not expect me or anyone else to make this token more valuable for you.”"}],[{"start":52.76,"text":"Investors seemed to agree. The launch has come during a painful winter for crypto, with the price of bitcoin plunging 30 per cent over the past year."}],[{"start":61.452,"text":"Memecoins are trading at bottom-of-the-barrel prices while digital asset treasury companies, a once-hot craze, have haemorrhaged $80bn in combined market value since the middle of last year."}],[{"start":73.6,"text":"Trump returned to office last year vowing to make the US “the crypto capital of the world”. His administration rolled back Biden-era restrictions on the sector and pardoned crypto figures including Changpeng Zhao, the founder of crypto exchange Binance, who pleaded guilty in 2023 to violating US anti-money laundering laws."}],[{"start":94.24,"text":"Trump’s sons also co-founded a crypto business called World Liberty Financial with the sons of White House envoy Steve Witkoff. Trump earned $1.2bn from his many crypto ventures in 2025, according to disclosures released in June."}],[{"start":109.166,"text":"Meanwhile, millions of crypto holders are still nursing losses from the $TRUMP coin, which has fallen 75 per cent over the past year, and landmark legislation governing the sector has stalled in the Senate over concerns about the president’s profits from the industry."}],[{"start":124.96,"text":"Biden’s $LAPTOP memecoin refers to his abandoned laptop, left in a Delaware computer repair shop, that became the centre of a maelstrom in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election. The discovery prompted allegations about his business deals and his father Joe Biden, who was running for president against Donald Trump at the time."}],[{"start":146.98,"text":"Subsequent government investigations did not find any evidence of wrongdoing by the president in relation to his son’s business interests, though its contents were used as evidence in prosecutions of Hunter Biden for gun possession and tax evasion charges. Joe Biden later pardoned his son for federal crimes, justifying the controversial move by saying Hunter was “unfairly” targeted."}],[{"start":169.44,"text":"Hunter Biden has become more vocal in the media this year, regularly criticising Trump and his allies for corruption. His latest crypto ventures, he said on social media, are “Because the Truth Matters”."}],[{"start":185.92,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1789006895_9620.mp3"}