My son and I have been listening to a technology podcast called Reply All. We just heard this one, The Bitcoin Hunter, about a woman who had purchased Bitcoin for a drug deal overseas years ago and had no idea if she had any left or where it was. It was riveting and I won’t give anything away in case you want to listen to it. As you know, the cryptocurrency Bitcoin has increased in value so exponentially that a few bitcoin purchased years ago are worth tens of thousands today. Bitcoin is purchased on exchanges, and as I learned from that podcast it’s possible to own some and to have either lost it on an old computer or forgotten about it.
The news came out recently that 50 Cent is a Bitcoin millionaire. He was paid in Bitcoin for an album, TMZ reported that he has 700 bitcoin, worth around $7 million, but according to his latest filings in bankruptcy court all of it was converted to dollars before it was received. It’s possible he’s fibbing about this because he doesn’t want these assets to be divided among his creditors. (Part of the reason he’s filing for bankruptcy is because he’s supposed to pay damages to a woman whose sex tape he leaked. He also has a $17 million judgement against him for stealing an ex partner’s headphone designs.) It would presumably be difficult for the court to determine whether the Bitcoin still exists. 50 bragged on social media about his Bitcoin millions after TMZ reported it though, so he thought he had the money even if he didn’t. He’s often bragged about money he doesn’t have, even posing on Instagram with stacks of prop money, so I guess that doesn’t mean much.
Fiddy filed documents in his bankruptcy case, obtained by The Blast, admitting that “Recent media reports have falsely stated” that he failed to disclose alleged interests in bitcoin to his Bankruptcy Court, but in reality he has “never owned, and does not own, a bitcoin account or any bitcoins, and to the best of his knowledge, none of his companies had a bitcoin account from 2014 to the present.”
The rapper is referring to reports from last month claiming he had earned millions in bitcoin after allowing his 2014 album, “Animal Ambition,” to accept the cryptocurrency as payment. Reports suggested he banked 700 bitcoins, which was valued to be worth between $7 million and $8 million during the crypto boom a few weeks ago.
According to the documents, 50 says “Animal Ambition” did accept bitcoin payments, but it was converted to U.S. dollars by a third party before it ever reached him or his companies. He stresses that he has never owned a bitcoin.
He says after questions from the U.S. Trustee and creditors related to his bankruptcy, he instructed his advisors to investigate the situation and ensure that he never collected a bitcoin.
As for why everyone, including 50, went along with the fake news story? He says, “As a general matter, so long as a press story is not irreparably damaging to my image or brand, I usually do not feel the need to publicly deny the reporting.” He adds, “This is particular [sic] true when I feel the press report in question is favorable to my image or brand, even if the report is based on a misunderstanding of the facts or contains outright falsehoods.”
[From The Blast via The Verge]
The Verge points us to some of 50’s tweets and IG posts bragging about the money, including “Not bad for a kid from South Side, I’m so proud of me” and “Ima keep it real, I forgot I did that shit lol.” It’s entirely possible he took TMZ’s report at face value and assumed he had a bunch of Bitcoin on the exchange and was rich. It’s also possible he lied about having the money, which he’s done multiple times before.
Is anyone else kicking themselves over never buying Bitcoin? It seemed like a fad but I heard about it years ago. Chances are high I would have sold it before it peaked though, even if I had the foresight to buy it. Life is full of these lost opportunities and it’s surely much worse to have spent 100 bitcoin on pot in 2011 and to realize that it would be enough money to retire on now.
Photos credit: WENN and Instagram/50 Cent
This moron, I can’t even. He’s the epitome of people who don’t deserve the kind of money they are handed
Whoa!! Like him or not he wasn’t just handed money. He worked for it and he earned it. Who are you to say who deserves what.
He’s filth as a human in general. A horrible father and treats women terribly — no he doesn’t deserve anything.
Being a sexist jerk is now ‘working for it’? Showing off an ‘I’m the toughest guy you’ll ever meet’ attitude isn’t exactly hard work that makes an impact on people’s lives. You know who works hard? A cleaning lady.
Oh I get it, so only certain people “deserve” money? That’s the silliest thing I’ve heard in this board in a while. Also I never said he worked hard, I said he worked for it and he earned it. Which he did. He didn’t steal it, or cheat to get it. It wasn’t handed to him on a silver platter. I could give two shits about him as a person but it’s a bit it’s not for any of us to decide who deserves what in life. That’s not how the world works. There was so much elitism and classism in that comment. That’s why I responded.
I’m not kicking myself because I still don’t quite understand cryptocurrency. I need to read up on it. I feel like I’ve been hearing that word and blockchain technology all over the place and I have no idea what either is. While neither of these are in my field of work (or area of interest), I hate feeling clueless and behind the times. Hopefully, I can find some article to get me up to speed on the basics. Also, 50 Cent sucks. He was cancelled for me after making fun of that young airport worker with autism. I will never be getting over that. It hurt my heart.
Good luck! I have read several articles and watched several videos on the subject and can’t make heads or tails of it.
Nobody would seriously listen to my husband when he schooled them on Bitcoin. They sure do regret it now……lol.
Haha. My ex-bf tried to convince me to buy bitcoins but I just didn’t get it. Do I feel stupid now with my debts from college and everything…
This was all him maybe seven years ago. He was adamant while I was hesitant. So glad he made the call. Don’t feel stupid, can’t go back…..look ahead. The best thing to do is educate yourself, can be a life changing move on your part. Go for it!
@ Nancy I don’t beat myself up over it or anything. It is just a passing “damn” whenever I see my ex and his posts about bitcoin. I just thought it was yet another phase he and his tech friends got into. God knows I have seen a lot of those LOL. Now bitcoin seems too expensive bu I don’t know maybe I should give my ex a call, he already teases me about this.
He is a big tooth piece of crap who deserves all of the horrible things that he is currently going through. I don’t think he is actually broke. This seems like the common and legal way to scam people out of what they are owed. Trump taught him well.
I read the first paragraph and I still have no clue what you are talking about, so I figure bitcoin is not for me. I will wait until the fifth version comes out and give it a try.
His lawyers most likely told him to shut up that’s probably the reason for the back pedaling
now, then they hid the money.
I heard about it in 2011. thought about buying some for S&giggles, but didn’t. not really bothered that I didn’t get some because it would have been on an old computer that crashed.
the way people keep talking about it makes me believe that it’s inflated to an unsustainable value.
“the way people keep talking about it makes me believe that it’s inflated to an unsustainable value”
This. And the old computers crashing part too. And the fact that some might think they’ve bought bitcoins but are actually in line to wait for coins that haven’t been minted yet. Also, try to actually sell your coins and get real money… I’ll keep my funds in places that are regulated and from where I can actually access the money if needed. Speculation is rarely going to get you rich
The selling the coins part is a major point of confusion for me as well. Where and how does that even go down?? Something about this bitcoin thing just seems like a pyramid scheme.
Actually if your computer is old, or anything like that, I believe you get codes – A LOT OF THEM – that you can write down and still have access to your bitcoin. When we moved my husband’s computer sh*t the bed and my husband spent weeks looking through old boxes to find a piece of paper he wrote the codes down on so he could still access.
My husband has a bitcoin miner. That thing, when it was mining and looking for some server I don’t understand, would be so loud I could hear it in our bedroom 2 floors up and it would irritate me. Now when I hear it I tell him to go fix it so it can earn us some money! He bought it for like $300 and we had maybe 2 or 3 bitcoins. He sold those when it hit 15k and we used it on a silly down payment for the Tesla Roadster. Now we’re back to maybe .5 a bitcoin. I still don’t understand it but he talks about getting another miner with more power because that $300 one definitely earned its keep.
Not gonna lie, I had a friend who is financially savvy and likes trying new things “just for fun”. Well, I’m 2012, he told me if I had some spare cash around, it would be cool too invested in this new currency called bitcoin. The only caveat being that it was unregulated currency. I was going to take some cash out of the bank and invest in bitcoin just for fun but decided against it. Two months ago he sent me a link to a bitcoin converter that would tell you how much your bitcoin will be worth based on when you invested and how much. I put in the month in 2012 that he told me to invest and the amount of money that I had been planning to invest and it turns out that it would have been worth about $400,000. I want to freaking die.
I wanted to buy bitcoin years ago, but didn’t really know how to. I’m sure I would have sold it as soon as it doubled in value, so I’m not too upset.
Same here. I wouldn’t have waited cause it’s obviously a bubble and you have to be an expert and a gambler to know when exactly is peak in order to not miss it and blow everything as it goes down, which it inevitably will.
I don’t understand unregulated currency. Seems like a crash waiting to happen.
Look at litecoin. Bitcoin is just the ‘gold’ coin of crypto. Litecoin is like a silver and hasn’t really inflated yet(its future value is predicted to be 1/4 of bitcoin)This is an adoption phase for new digital currency from an older monetary system into a new digital system. It’s getting federally regulated(look at taxes, look at fedcoin).This is actually the future people, as crazy as it seems it’s not a bubble. It’s like someone telling you about the internet before the internet came to be- sounds like crazy talk till it isn’t. Educate yourself now you could own shares of say Microsoft, Apple etc. when they were worth pennies by comparison. Today the future apples, are called alt coins(Tron, Stellar, ADA etc.) Granted, a bunch of the alt coins will also not make it, so you have to educate yourself on what you invest in and really know what your investing into. For example, TRON is expected to be a future internet 2.0 primarily specializing in entertainment(think YouTube or Netflix) but where users actually own their own content. TRX is just the token used to exchange content. Only way to get TRX is to exchange for litecoin/bitcoin/bitcoin cash etc.(the digital currencies).
You didn’t miss the boat if you didn’t get bitcoin. It was just the first one to prove digital currency is possible using block chain technology. Also you wouldn’t want to store an investment online – you’d use a digital wallet or ledger to store offline for substantial amounts. Yes a lot of the Trail Blazers got burned, but that’s part of a mass adoption and figuring out what to do and not to do…
I worked for a publication that offered payment in Bitcoin. This was back when it was about $20. I would be a millionaire now if I’d taken that offer, but my landlord wouldn’t take BTC any more than the grocery store would. I needed it to live on.
Last year I had a dreadful accident and someone donated half a Bitcoin to my fundraiser. That donation is now my entire life savings, and I am so, so glad it’s there. I don’t mind if it goes up to $20,000 and back down to 10, it’s free money.
So how do taxes work on Bitcoin income? I just can’t figure it out. I have been back and forth on whether to invest in it now and it’s probably too late to get the really good ROI, but maybe in other cryptocurrencies…
I invested in crytocurrency in November, got back my intial investment and made some profit. Any profit is good profit…just have to remember not to be greedy.