If you were hesitant about all this Bitcoin business, let 50 Cent’s success story convince you otherwise. The “Candy Shop” rapper hilariously and forgetfully made $8 million in Bitcoin without even dropping a verse.
It was a great day for 50 Cent as he woke up and realized the ghost of Bitcoin’s past has come back not to haunt him, but to shower him with an unexpected and overwhelming amount of money.
In 2014, he released his album Animal Ambition: An Untamed Desire to Win featuring collaborations with artists like Trey Songz and Yo Gotti. It didn’t necessarily top the charts; in fact, The Guardian critiqued it saying “unchanged are his limitations as a rapper, both technically and in his choice of subjects.”
This was clearly not his most successful album and he has not created one since. 50 Cent’s Get Rich or Die Tryin‘ attitude did not get him very far because a year after his album released, he filed for bankruptcy.
This came just three days after he was ordered to pay $5 million to Lastonia Leviston who was suing him for releasing her sex tape online.
50 Cent has taken some L’s in the past few years, but little did he know that his forgotten Bitcoin blessing would multiply significantly. Fiddy accepted 700 Bitcoins in 2014 for his Animal Ambition album and didn’t touch that money for four years.
In 2014, 700 Bitcoin would have been worth somewhere around $400,000.
By 2017, everyone, and we mean everyone, on Twitter and in the stock markets started paying attention to, and poking fun of the cryptocurrency, whether they understood it or not. But in 2014, Bitcoin felt like a far off reality and a skeptical investment for many.
Flash forward to 2018; new year, new Fiddy. He is currently cashing in about $8 million from Bitcoin and can’t help but laugh out loud at his own unexpected financial success and, while he’s ahead, use this opportunity for a little self-promotion for his new movie Den of Thieves, that was released mid January.
In a now-deleted Instagram post, he wrote “Not bad for a kid from the South Side, I’m so proud of me.” Not sure it makes sense to be proud of something you forgot, but hey, celebrate the little (or big) victories.
He also, commenting on his own photo, wrote “Imma keep it real I forgot I did that sh*t. Lol.”
It seems like he has already accepted his success and is moving onward and upward, focusing on more important things.
One of his latest Instagram posts after the news broke is a video of a grown man running down a hill and hilariously falling flat on his face, with 50 Cent captioning it, “Stop talking about my money, look at this sh*t. LOL.”
We can all learn a thing or two from 50 Cent’s Bitcoin success story as we go into the new year. Sometimes you fail, but life can’t always keep you down, patience is key and when you do win, it’s okay to celebrate yourself.