Rapper 50 Cent Tells Bankruptcy Court He Never Owned Bitcoin

News | February 27, 2018 By:

Curtis Jackson, better known by his rap alias 50 Cent, has reportedly admitted in his bankruptcy case that he “has never owned, and does not now own, a bitcoin account or any bitcoin,” nor have his businesses.

Last month, it was reported that 50 Cent had made around $8 million – according to the valuation of bitcoin at the time – by accepting bitcoin as payment for his 2014 album, “Animal Ambition.” At the time, the rapper appeared to confirm the news on Instagram, writing, “Not bad for a kid from the South Side, I’m so proud of me.” In a comment on the social media site, Jackson claimed that he had forgotten about the cache of bitcoin in the years since the Animal Ambition move.

In a bankruptcy court filing obtained by The Blast, the rapper supplied screenshots of his BitPay account that detailed a few thousand dollars’ worth in bitcoin transactions. He explained that all online transactions involving his brand were handled by an independently owned and operated third party, Central Nervous LLC, and the limited bitcoin transactions that occurred online were processed and converted to US Dollars contemporaneously.

Jackson explained in the documents that he didn’t feel the need to immediately clarify the initial reports on his estimated fortune because his comments were, at least partly, true. “When I first became aware of the press reports on this matter, I made social media posts stating that ‘I forgot I did that’ because I had, in fact, forgotten that I was one of the first recording artists to accept bitcoin for online transactions,” he wrote.

Jackson also said he did not publicly deny the reports because the press coverage was favorable and suggested that he had made millions of dollars as a result of his good business decision to accept bitcoin payments.

“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,” Jackson wrote. “This is particularly true when I feel the press report in question is favorable to my image or brand, even if that report is based on a misunderstanding of the facts or contains outright falsehoods.”