Hunter Biden, the second son of former US president Joe Biden, now turned painter, has started using UK startup Verisart to certify nearly 100 of his works on the blockchain. At the same time, he’s now accepting Bitcoin for his art, in common with many other artists today.
In the past, Biden has been better known for the long-running political firestorm around his business dealings, personal life and Donald Trump’s attacks on the Biden family than for his oils on canvas. But in recent years, he has pushed himself as a serious artist, producing large-scale abstract and floral works that were initially priced at between $75,000 and $500,000.
Now his official art website displays “Bitcoin Accepted” in the footer, allowing buyers to purchase works using the cryptocurrency. Alongside that, Biden is using Verisart to create digital certificates recording provenance and ownership.
But Verisart says this was not some carefully choreographed partnership.
Robert Norton, Verisart’s founder and CEO, spoke exclusively to Pathfounders, saying Biden appeared to have simply signed up to the service just like any other artist could.
“We have no contact with them, he just signed up like other artists sign up, and the next minute we knew he had registered almost 100 works and linked to our certificates through his website.”
“Our engineers were like, ‘Wow, is this real?’” he said. “He’s passed through our third-party verification provider in terms of his identity, and he’s uploaded these works.”
Norton said Verisart was “absolutely delighted” by the use case, but stressed there was no direct relationship with Biden or his team.
“It’s just software as a service available to anybody,” he said.
He stressed that Verisart is not brokering Biden’s sales, nor is it involved in the Bitcoin payment functionality on his website: “That’s nothing to do with us. We’re not transacting any work on his part.”
However, the news is still significant in that it’s a validation of Verisart’s role as a verification service.
The company provides blockchain-based certificates of authenticity for artworks and collectables. Its platform is designed to create secure, tamper-resistant records showing who made a work, when it was certified, and how ownership changes over time.
Norton said Biden may have been drawn to the service because of impersonation and fake accounts.
“He does have a lot of fake [social] accounts using his name,” Norton said. “Some of which are obviously parody accounts, some of which are fake accounts on platforms like X… This is a good way to provide an additional layer of trust and authenticity to his works,” Norton said.
It’s certainly interesting that a politically sensitive artist, with a name that conjures controversy, is now leaning on blockchain infrastructure to make his paper trail much harder to dispute.
For Verisart, founded by Norton, the Biden connection is a high-profile validation of its pitch that while blockchain may have disappointed many as a sort of ‘casino’ for NFTs and other dubious applications, it still has a clear use case as infrastructure for the art market.
The company, which launched just over ten years ago, says it has now processed almost 300,000 certificates. Norton said the strongest traction has come from living artists using Verisart to create “next generation” certificates of authenticity, which are able to pull together images and provenance in one place.
Its Shopify app is also being used by merchants who want certificates added at checkout, particularly for limited edition prints. Bottleneck Gallery in New York and Shepard Fairey are among the users of the platform. Investors in Verisart include Rhodium, Sinai Ventures and Galaxy Interactive.
Verisart also has a marketplace function, allowing artists not only to certify works but to sell them through the platform using inquiry buttons or fixed prices.
But while Verisart might be getting an uplift from his use of their platform, Biden, as an artist, is doing less well.
Earlier in his art career, Biden reportedly sold 27 pieces at an average price of around $55,000 per piece. But since late 2023, he has reportedly recorded only one sale, for $36,000. In March 2025 court filings, he also disclosed “significant debt in the millions”, underlining the financial pressure around his wider affairs.
