United States rapper 50 Cent has recently found out that he is a millionaire in bitcoins, thanks to sales of a previous album.
In 2014, 50 Cent released his album Animal Ambition and became the first musical artist who accepted bitcoin as payment. According to TMZ, he let his bitcoin account lie untouched, and just recently discovered that he is a bitcoin millionaire.
50 Cent said on his Instagram account that he had forgotten he accepted the cryptocurrency as a form of payment.
By the time the album was released in late 2014, Billboard wrote an article titled “9 albums that flopped in 2014 (or did they?)”, and mentioned Animal Ambition as one of the flops that year. Billboard wrote, “Despite plenty of publicity, 50 sold less than a third of the first-week sales for his previous studio effort.”
Billboard did not mention that 50 earned around 700 bitcoins from the album sales in an account he neglected. Since then, the bitcoins have become worth nearly US$8 million (S$10.4 million).
At the time of the album’s release, a single bitcoin was worth $660. Now, the same amount is worth $11,200 according to Coindesk. At the time, 50 said on Reddit that he would “stay with times” and accept bitcoin as payment, but the hip-hop star apparently forgot about his account and let it rest.
Bitcoin evangelists on Twitter were quick to respond 50’s tweet, and pitched the rapper various crypto platforms and coins that he should check out next.
