Rapper 50 Cent reportedly made millions selling his album for bitcoin

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The rapper 50 Cent accepted bitcoin as payment for his 2014 album, "Animal Ambition," according to TMZ.
The 700 bitcoins he is said to have raked in are now worth $7 million to $8.5 million, and he reportedly hasn't offloaded his stake yet.

50 Cent looks to have 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, accepted bitcoin as payment for his 2014 album, "Animal Ambition," according to a report from TMZ. The digital currency was worth roughly $662 a coin back then, and TMZ cited sources as saying 50 Cent was able to rake in 700 bitcoins.

Now that the red-hot cryptocurrency has exploded higher, trading at about $11,300, a 700-bitcoin stash would be worth $7 million to $8.5 million, TMZ calculates.

This wouldn't be 50 Cent's first time finding himself in a lucrative investment situation. About a decade ago, he became a minority shareholder and celebrity spokesman 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 certainly seems to have been ahead of the curve in terms of transacting bitcoin, he would not be alone. In a recent op-ed article for Business Insider, the Seattle Seahawks superstar Richard Sherman said 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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