does bcoin support simplified payment verification (SPV)? Does bcoin support simplified payment verification (SPV)? I can't seem to find anything about it online
Yes, it supports SPV out of the box. Bcoin actually started out as an SPV project according to Buck Perley. 

Here is an example on how to start up a bcoin node in spv

https://github.com/bcoin-org/bcoin/blob/master/docs/Examples/spv-sync-wallet.js