The crypto world, already on its last legs, has just gotten a celebrity—or rather, someone with a famous name: Hunter Biden, son of former U.S. President Joe Biden.

Yesterday, he said he was launching a coin. Nearly two years after Trump and his wife launched coins that left a bad taste in everyone's mouth, the family that went to war with Trump is now jumping in too. Honestly, this just makes it even more distasteful. What I really want to know is why he's doing this.

Looking through Hunter Biden's history, it's been a long time since I've seen such a textbook portrait of a spoiled rich kid. Compared to everything else, launching a coin actually seems like one of his more normal moves.

A Self-Portrait

In September 2026, an online avatar appeared: a man smoking a cigarette.

His face isn't a whole image—it's pieced together from blocks of color. Red, yellow, blue, like a mosaic. Behind him are tropical leaves and a patch of leopard print. This painting was done by Hunter Biden, and it's a portrait of himself.

He turned it into the logo for $LAPTOP. The coin launched on-chain on September 9. Total supply is 1 billion tokens, with the founding team holding 30%. The project's website is brutally honest: the coin has no utility, its value relies entirely on emotion and speculation, and buyers could lose their entire investment.

In June 2025, Hunter once explained why he paints this way.

He said he was painting based on the photos of him using drugs and falling apart that the New York Post and Daily Mail had repeatedly published back in the day. He said those people used that photo as a weapon, so he wanted to piece that person back together in his own way—block by block, bit by bit, pixel by pixel.

A year later, he put that face on the blockchain and sold it. In April 2019, he left a broken laptop at a repair shop in Delaware and never came back for it. The shop owner copied the hard drive. The contents later ended up in the hands of Rudy Giuliani and the New York Post. On October 14, 2020, the Post published it. It contained business emails, but mostly his personal life. Twitter restricted sharing at the time, and you can imagine—nothing good was on that hard drive.

That laptop was later confirmed in court to have been genuinely used. It became the label he can't shake off: the laptop. $LAPTOP. He's just given up at this point.

A Title

Publicly, he's always called himself an Artist. His studio is a converted backyard. His paintings have been shown at New York's Georges Bergès Gallery, with a solo exhibition titled "The Journey Home." He's published a memoir called "Beautiful Things." He talks on podcasts about recovery, about sobriety, about taking his life back one day at a time.

This whole setup, he had been cultivating for years. It was his way of burying something else.

That other thing is what the public has remembered him for all these years: a laptop. Drugs, an illegitimate child, falsified gun forms, a cigarette, a photo of him caught in a daze. He wanted "Hunter the painter" to overshadow "Hunter the laptop."

The question is: what exactly is this painter remembered for?

During the years his father was president, his paintings sold well. Around two dozen pieces, totaling roughly $1.5 million. The most eye-catching names on the buyer list were two: Democratic donor Elizabeth Hirsh Naftali and Hollywood attorney Kevin Morris. The latter was both the "benefactor" who lent Hunter money to cover taxes and living expenses, and the one who bought 11 pieces at once for $875,000.

The White House built a "firewall" around this business: buyers were anonymous, and neither Hunter nor the White House knew who was buying, so there was supposedly no quid pro quo.

Later, the gallery owner testified before Congress and blew a hole in that wall. He said he never discussed the arrangement with the White House. He said Hunter initially wanted to know who the buyers were. He said Hunter was aware of the buyers behind roughly 70% of the sales proceeds.

No court ever found that any single purchase was a "buy-a-painting-for-a-post" deal. But one thing is hard and fast: people weren't spending over a million dollars on art—they were buying "first family access."

Hunter likely knew this. He chose not to ask.

After late 2023, when his father left office, his paintings suddenly stopped selling. Public records show only one more sale—$36,000. Now his website still lists a painting priced at $54,000, with the condition of a video call with Hunter himself. He accepts Bitcoin.

The paintings are still there. The price tags are still up. The buyers are gone.

A Path Paved in Advance

Undergrad at Georgetown, law school at Yale. The exit of this path leads to the most respectable professions in this country—lawyer, prosecutor, or, like his brother Beau, walking the "good Biden" route. He did dabble in law firms, funds, lobbying, and consulting—all respectable turns in Washington.

He never finished any of them.

The Navy Reserve was the same script. In 2013, at age 43, with a history of drug use and needing an age waiver, he got into the Reserve. That was never a position he earned on merit. In 2014, he tested positive for cocaine in a urinalysis and was discharged in February. The official story at the time was that "a cigarette smoked outside may have been laced with something." Later, in his memoir, he stopped telling it that way.

The most infamous chapter came in 2014. He joined the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company, with an annual salary in the millions of dollars. At the same time, his father was serving as Vice President, overseeing U.S. policy toward Ukraine.

He later admitted himself: that job was largely because his last name was Biden.

He walked every good path—only to see them collapse behind him. Law school, law firms, funds, the Navy, boardrooms—he was constantly arranged for, taken in, placed inside circles; and then he kept drinking, using, lying, and screwing it all up.

A textbook spoiled rich kid.

A Mess of Accounts

His personal life was even messier than his resume.

He drank heavily for years, cooked his own crack cocaine, bought drugs on the streets of Washington, and lived with homeless addict friends. In his memoir, he wrote about it candidly, without glossing over anything. In those days, there was no "dignity."

In 2017, he ended his marriage of more than two decades to Kathleen Buhle. Around that same time, he got together with his sister-in-law, Hallie Biden.

Hallie was the widow of his brother Beau. Beau died of brain cancer in 2015—the one the whole family saw as the heir to their father's legacy. Hunter dated his sister-in-law.

That relationship ended quickly.

The next year, he had a daughter with a woman named Lunden Roberts. At first, he said he didn't remember sleeping with her. A court-ordered paternity test proved the child was his. He later paid child support. In 2026, Roberts sued him again, claiming he failed to pay as agreed and cut off contact.

Where his money went is spelled out clearly in court documents. In his tax case, he pleaded guilty to nine counts, owing $1.4 million in unpaid taxes. Where the money went: escorts, strip clubs, cars, drugs.

In 2025, his law licenses in Washington and Connecticut were revoked.

You see, it wasn't that he had no options. It's that every option was slowly blocked off by his own hand.

A Bill to Pay

Launching a coin was most likely because he was out of money—or because he needed to maintain the persona of being broke.

His traditional income streams were nearly all shut down.

After his father left office, his paintings stopped selling. The speaking invitations never came either.

On December 1, 2024, his father, just before leaving office, signed a "full and unconditional" pardon. The scope went beyond the already-convicted gun and tax cases, covering all federal offenses he had committed—or might have committed—between January 1, 2014, and December 1, 2024.

The key phrase is: might have committed. That single piece of paper didn't just wipe away what had already been adjudicated—it also swept in risks that had yet to be pursued, or even known to anyone. All potential federal offenses over that decade were erased.

Joe Biden had repeatedly said he would not pardon his son. In November, the White House press secretary said the answer was still no. A month later, the answer changed.

A pardon is not a declaration of innocence. It simply removes criminal consequences from a person. What it clears away is the risk of prison. It doesn't touch a single cent of civil bills.

The father wiped out every charge that could have put him behind bars—and then those debts, those bills, stayed right where they were, waiting for him to face alone.

And so came this coin.

Legal fees are the biggest chunk. He owes his former defense firm, Winston & Strawn, roughly $15 million to $17 million, and the firm has already sued. He owes Kevin Morris about $5 million—money that covered his taxes and personal debts. He also owes his former art dealer around $1 million. The New York Post has estimated the whole package at roughly $20 million.

In February 2026, he testified under oath in court, and his words spread widely.

He said he had no car, no phone, no stocks, no bonds, no savings. The only thing he owned of any value was his own artwork, worth an amount he himself didn't know. He said his family had no money either—"these were never their debts." His lawyer used a very dignified word in court filings: impecunious—too broke to pay.

The New York Post then quoted people close to the Biden family, saying it was all an act of playing poor. He was actually holed up in a luxury estate in Santa Ynez, California.

Issuing the coin is just selling "Biden's son" and "that laptop" one more time.

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