Rapper 50 Cent, legally known as Curtis Jackson III, says he isn’t a bitcoin millionaire after all despite his implying that he was just over a month ago.
At that time, TMZ published a report stating that Jackson had accepted roughly 700 bitcoin as part of his work on the 2014 album, Animal Ambition. Back then, the bitcoin stash would’ve gone for about $400,000, but with today’s rate, the rapper would’ve been sitting on nearly $8 million. He all but confirmed the news with a screenshot of the article on Instagram with the caption, “Not bad for a kid from South Side, I’m so proud of me.”
Now, however, Jackson says that he doesn’t actually own any bitcoin, and his post from Instagram has been deleted. Chapter 11 bankruptcy documents cited by CNBC and referencing the TMZ report, state that bitcoins received for the album were “contemporaneously” exchanged for dollars, which would’ve netted him a much lower haul four years ago.
In Jackson’s January post on Instagram, he added a comment saying, “I’m a keep it real. I forgot I did that s—.” But now Jackson says in the bankruptcy filing that he did not deny the reports because their content was in part 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,” Jackson wrote in the documents, according to CNBC.
“I did not publicly deny the reports that I held bitcoins because the press coverage was favorable and suggested that I had made millions of dollars as a result of my good business decision to accept bitcoin payments,” he added.