Rapper 50 Cent says he made millions selling his album for bitcoin
Rapper 50 Cent says he accepted bitcoin as payment for his 2014 album "Animal Ambition."
The 700 bitcoin he raked in are now worth between $7 million and $8.5 million, and he reportedly hasn't offloaded his stake yet.
50 Cent has figured out a way to make a killing in the struggling music industry, and it involves everyone's favorite cryptocurrency.
The rapper, best known for his string of chart-topping hits in the early 2000s, says that he accepted bitcoin as payment for his 2014 album "Animal Ambition," according to a report from TMZ. It was worth roughly $662 a coin back then, and TMZ sources say 50 Cent was able to rake in a total of 700 bitcoin.
Now that the red-hot cryptocurrency has exploded higher, trading around $11,300, his 700-bitcoin stash is worth somewhere between $7 million and $8.5 million, TMZ calculates.
This isn't the first time 50 Cent has found himself in a lucrative investment situation. About a decade ago, he became a minority shareholder and celebrity spokesperson for VitaminWater, only to make a whopping $100 million after taxes after its parent company was purchased for $4.1 billion, according to Forbes.
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While 50 Cent was certainly ahead of the curve in terms of transacting bitcoin, he's not alone. In a recent op-ed for Business Insider, Seattle Seahawks superstar Richard Sherman said that his online store started accepting the cryptocurrency "long before people were campaigning for Amazon to allow virtual currencies as a payment method."
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