A Presidential Failson’s New Crypto Grift

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“Don’t get too excited about Hunter Biden’s new social media persona,” I wrote on June 5. “Looks like another nepo baby crypto grift is afoot...”

Today, Hunter Biden—son of former President Joe Biden—made it official. In a sign that crypto is entering a new phase of its death spiral, Hunter announced plans to launch his own meme coin. From the Wall Street Journal:

The son of former President Joe Biden is launching a meme coin that takes aim at his family’s nemesis, Donald Trump. And he’s naming it for the most-infamous personal computer in American political history. 

Yes, Hunter Biden’s laptop will live on. At least on the blockchain.

Biden’s token will trade under the ticker, $LAPTOP, and launch Sept. 9 on Base, a digital ledger built by Coinbase Global ... the largest U.S. crypto exchange, people familiar with the matter said. 

That’s right. Hunter Biden—a convicted felon whose criminal record was wiped clean by a pardon from his daddy, the president—is going full crypto bro. It makes sense. A meme coin is generally a method of siphoning money from people by convincing them to buy fake digital joke money.

“Meme coins carry no intrinsic value, and most tumble in price within days or even hours after their launch,” reports the WSJ.

The announcement comes after a brief period during which Biden emerged as a prolific social media poster and podcast guest, wowing liberal audiences with his spicy takes and dramatic antics. There has even been talk about a presidential run.

Biden’s meme coin will undoubtedly fail. But how much money will flow into Biden’s coffers in the meantime, and from where? Foreign interests have funneled billions of dollars into Trump family crypto ventures. So have many Trump supporters, who have lost billions of dollars as a result.

Joe Biden’s presidential failson, 56, has been broke and mired in debt—though he recently won a $1.7 million defamation case against former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne. Now, he’s hoping to follow the Trumps by using crypto as a magic money machine to generate loads of wealth out of thin air.

But where does this all lead?

Biden himself has given us the answer. When I speculated that he was heading toward a crypto play back in June, I wasn’t randomly guessing. I was reacting to a post in which Biden spouted—word-for-word—the most extreme crypto bro talking points imaginable.

“Fiat is a sham, the banking class is corrupt, decentralized digital currency and the blockchain are the inevitable future, and the incumbents will fight it to the death,” wrote Biden on X on June 5—in a tweet that sounded more like Peter Thiel or Balaji Srinivasan than the son of a Democratic president.

So, it was immediately clear that Biden was on a crypto cash grab arc, using gullible podcast hosts to build his social media audience and develop the parasocial relationships necessary to eventually sell crypto to suckers (and anyone else wishing to pour money onto a political nepo baby with a large social media following).

Biden’s comments echoed the most extreme version of crypto bro beliefs—the idea that government-issued money (rather than crypto) is actually fake, and that a shift to crypto is “inevitable.” (Biden has also pumped non-fungible tokens (NFTs), another digital “asset” scheme that collapsed after a brief period of hype.)

This is not Biden’s first questionable business venture. During the Obama presidency, he made gobs of money consulting for Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company. Later, he scandalized the art world by selling his painting for unusually high sums of money, a lucrative project that apparently ended with his father’s presidency. As Arwa Mahdawi wrote in the Guardian in March 2025:

Just a few years ago, Joe Biden’s troubled son, who had previously earned megabucks sitting on various boards doing mysterious board things, was enjoying remarkable success as an “emerging” artist. His paintings were being exhibited in a fancy New York gallery and selling for large sums. Kevin Morris, a Hollywood lawyer and friend of Biden, reportedly bought 11 works for a total of $875,000 (£690,000). Elizabeth Hirsh Naftali, a Democratic donor, bought two paintings, for $42,000 and $52,000. All in all, Hunter sold art for about $1.5m between 2021 and 2024. Not too shabby for someone considered an amateur.

But something changed:

Now, however, Biden’s creative career appears to be cratering. In court filings last week, Hunter said he was seeking to dismiss a lawsuit concerning his abandoned laptop hard drive because he doesn’t have the money to continue litigation. “My income has decreased significantly,” read the documents. “In the 2 to 3 years prior to December 2023, I sold 27 pieces of art at an average price of $54,481.48, but since then I have only sold 1 piece of art for $36,000 … I was expecting to obtain paid speaking engagements and paid appearances, but that has not happened.”

Golly, I wonder why? Has the art market shifted, do you reckon? Or had his dad’s political power started to wane?

Hmm...big mystery.

Now Biden is entering the crypto market—and spouting Network State talking points about crypto replacing government currency—as the crypto market experiences severe turbulence under the Trump regime. Bitcoin has lost zillions in market value as Trump’s open corruption has exposed crypto as little more than a scam for enriching oligarchs and bribing politicians.

So, Biden is late to the game, but the playbook is clear: Crypto, the last refuge of a scoundrel.

What’s next? A Network State? A venture capital firm? A Coinbase-powered presidential run?