How 50 Cent's 'Animal Ambition' Helped The Rapper Earn $8 Million Worth Of Bitcoin

50 Cent ain’t a value buy. The rapper is worth nearly 16 million times that in cryptocurrency alone.

Back in 2014, the prescient businessman bet on bitcoin and became the first to accept it as payment for his album. “Animal Ambition” drew about 700 bitcoin in sales, a total beyond $400,000 for a coin then trading around $662, according to TMZ.

At bitcoin’s peak, the pot was worth nearly $14 million. Now, though, if he hasn’t yet cashed the currency, he’s sitting on about $7.9 million.

50 Cent was ahead of his time, but his profitable gamble inspired the industry.

Late last year, Bjork announced she would accept album pre-orders in bitcoin, audiocoin, litecoin and dashcoin, while 45 musicians, from Mariah Carey and Dolly Parton to the Lumineers and B-52s, accepted Monero for their holiday sales.

Meanwhile, Wu-Tang Clan’s Ghostface Killah launched an initial coin offering to raise funds for Cream Capital, and the underlying blockchain technology is also being developed to secure the art community’s intellectual property.

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A Trader's Guide To Cryptocurrencies

Image credit: Keith Hinkle [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons