Rapper 50 Cent is reportedly a bitcoin millionaire after accepting the cryptocurrency as payment in 2014 and forgetting about it, according to TMZ.
The entertainer became one of the first to accept bitcoin as payment for his work on his album "Animal Ambition," TMZ said. The album made more than $400,000 in sales, translated into 700 bitcoins at the time.
There, the rapper, whose real name is Curtis Jackson, let the haul languish for years. The sudden surge in bitcoin value, though, caught Jackson's attention and now his bitcoin net is now worth from $7 million to $8.5 million, TMZ said.
TechCrunch wrote that the bitcoin value could prove to be a nice nest egg for Jackson who filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2015 where he had to repay $23 million in debt. The rapper paid off the debt in 2017 after receiving money from a settlement, the tech website said.
The rapper, whose hip hop crime film "Get Rich or Die Tryin'" solidified his foothold in acting, bragged about his good fortune on Twitter Tuesday.
Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, or a digital currency, that uses rules of cryptography for regulation and generation of units of currency, according to the Economic Times. Bitcoins are designed to be 'self-contained' for their value, removing the need for banks to move and store them, the publication said.
The rapper, though, may be looking at a hefty tax fee from the Internal Revenue Service as well. According to CNBC, the federal government views bitcoin as property, not currency, so whenever someone buys something with bitcoin, it's two transactions, not one and has to be reported on your taxes.
If bitcoins are held as investments, bitcoins will be taxed as income if held for less than a year, CNBC said. If the bitcoins have been held for more than one year, like in Jackson's case, it will be taxed as a capital gain, which could run 20 percent.
The business network wrote that once transaction and accounting fees are added on, the bitcoin investment could costs up to 60 percent of the cryptocurrency.
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