Rapper 50 Cent says he made millions selling his album for bitcoin

Getty/Cindy Ord

• Rapper 50 Cent says he accepted bitcoin as payment for his 2014 album "Animal Ambition."
• The 700 bitcoin he raked in are now worth between $7 million and $8.5 million, and he reportedly hasn't offloaded his stake yet.

50 Cent has figured out a way to make a killing in the struggling music industry, and it involves everyone's favorite cryptocurrency.

The rapper, best known for his string of chart-topping hits in the early 2000s, says that he accepted bitcoin as payment for his 2014 album "Animal Ambition," according to a report from TMZ. It was worth roughly $662 a coin back then, and TMZ sources say 50 Cent was able to rake in a total of 700 bitcoin.

Now that the red-hot cryptocurrency has exploded higher, trading around $11,300, his 700-bitcoin stash is worth somewhere between $7 million and $8.5 million, TMZ calculates.

This isn't the first time 50 Cent has found himself in a lucrative investment situation. About a decade ago, he became a minority shareholder and celebrity spokesperson for VitaminWater, only to make a whopping $100 million after taxes after its parent company was purchased for $4.1 billion, according to Forbes.

While 50 Cent was certainly ahead of the curve in terms of transacting bitcoin, he's not alone. In a recent op-ed for Business Insider, Seattle Seahawks superstar Richard Sherman said that his online store started accepting the cryptocurrency "long before people were campaigning for Amazon to allow virtual currencies as a payment method."

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