Have you ever made a seemingly impossible bet that you were sure would never pay off? And when it does, you just have to tell everyone about how you beat the odds? Well, that is what 50 Cent, better known as the rapper of the popular hit ‘Candy Shop’, did when he invested early on in cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin.
50 Cent wasted no time in taking to social media to gloat about his wise investments.
He first took to Twitter, posting a ‘pat on the back’ tweet last Tuesday, in which he opens sarcastically, asking anyone if they want some Bitcoin. 50 Cent then goes on to acknowledge that he probably makes people sick, but then shrugs it off by saying that he’s ‘getting to the bag’.
https://twitter.com/50cent/status/955908135922950144
The rapper made the big bucks by selling his 2014 studio album, Animal Ambition, for a cut of Bitcoin instead of paper money or card payments. Bitcoin is considered to be the most popular form of cryptocurrency on the market right now.
Ahead of the times
On June 3rd 2014, 50 Cent took to Reddit and participated in an AMA (ask me anything), the same day Animal Ambition hit the shelves, and the very first day that the rapper had set up and used his Reddit account. In an announcement during the AMA, 50 Cent told everyone that he was accepting the popular cryptocurrency Bitcoin as payment for his album. When asked why, he jokingly replied that it was to “stay with the times”.
Whether sheer dumb luck or a calculated investment, it certainly paid off in the end. The move made history: he became one of the first and most well-known rappers to take in cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin in turn for his work.
The gamble
On the day that 50 Cent released his studio album, Bitcoin was nowhere near the amount it has risen to now; it was barely over $662. A report by TMZ came out right around the same time, that 5O Cent – whose legal name is Curtis Jackson – found that he made an estimated 700 Bitcoins from the sale of Animal Ambition alone, when each copy of his album was selling for only a single fraction of a Bitcoin. Reliable sources told TMZ that the Bitcoins sat completely untouched in 50 Cent’s account for many years.
The payoff
Although the price of Bitcoin has been on somewhat of a roller-coaster ride, it is still worth much more than what 50 Cent accumulated it at in 2014. In mid-December of 2017, it peaked at a little over $19,300. In this past week, it was valued somewhere between $9,500 and $12,900. Late this Tuesday night it was trading at a value a little less than $10,850.
By using the most recent value of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin and a simple calculation, it would seem that 50 Cent has accumulated almost $7.6 million of the popular cryptocurrency. If you want to use the lowest point in Bitcoin’s worth over the past week, he would still have over $6.6 million.
Considering 50 Cent had to file for bankruptcy protection in 2015, I’d say he is doing pretty well for himself. A check on Celebrity Net Worth shows that he nets $20 million, and that probably does not take his Bitcoin shares into consideration.
