When 50 Cent was asked on ‘Late Night with Seth Meyers’ to expand on why he accepted Bitcoin, the famous rapper stated simply: ‘All money is money.’
Although Bitcoin was named one of the worst investments of 2014, and Goldman Sachs said bitcoin is not a real currency, rapper 50 Cent think of bitcoin as just another word for cash.
When Curtis ’50 Cent’ Jackson was on Late Night with Seth Meyers on December 16th, 2014, Mr. Meyers asked him about why he chose to make his latest album named ‘Animal Ambition’ available for purchase with Bitcoin.
“All money is money,” said the rapper (check the video on 3:30 for 50’s comments on bitcoin.) When asked about his acceptance of Bitcoin during a Reddit AMA for the promotion of his new album, Mr. Jackson expanded on his decision to use BitPay: “Stay with times. Technology is what’s changing the business gotta get with it. I take money no matter if its coins or dollars.”
“I accepted the online change early on,” 50 Cent told Mr. Meyers when asked if he was happy how his sales went. “A lot of my peers were resisting it because it made them feel normal, like everybody else was doing it.”
He continued: “So I was like, ‘Naw, I don’t do that, I’m a star.’ They should feel that point, like when people are outside and you’re in the house, there’s so many people out there. And then I’m like, ‘You might be inside hiding, but there’s nobody outside no more.’ I don’t want to be the guy inside hiding when there’s nobody outside anymore.”
Nobody knows how much 50Cent made from bitcoin transactions, but BitPay, the company that he used to process the payments, says that bitcoin fans are right in 50 Cent’s target demographic and beyond the ‘all money is money’ philosophy.
“The bitcoin community is also an untapped market ready to spend their money,”Stephanie Wargo, VP of Marketing at BitPay, told Betabeat when Mr. Jackson first dropped the album. “Accepting bitcoin is a great business decision for a popular and independent hip-hop artist such as 50 Cent.”
By the way, 50 Cent is now $78 million richer as he has signed a new deal with Frigo Revolution Wear to promote a brand of upmarket men’s underwear. Making the announcement via his Instagram account on December 15, 2014, the rapper wrote: “I just did a deal for $78 million for underwear. What did you m*********s do today?”
This sizable endorsement isn’t a surprise as, according to Forbes, 50 Cent has accumulated a fortune of more than $140 million throughout his career, ranking him No. 5 on the list of hip hop’s wealthiest artists.
Another famous rapper Nasir Jones (Nas) has taken his Bitcoin promotion to the next level. Earlier today he posted a picture to his nearly 4,5 million of Facebook followers that he was opening up a TheRaptest’s contest and would be awarding bitcoin to the top 100 fans.
“[Bitcoin] will evolve into an industry as big, if not bigger, than the Internet,” Nas said in an interview with CoinDesk earlier this year. He also revealed that he is actually one of the investors behind Coinbase. “My man Ben Horowitz really opened my eyes to that point. This isn’t of the Internet age, bitcoin is its own age.”
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