Rapper 50 Cent used bitcoin to play the press

(RNN) – “Get Rich or Die Tryin’” made 50 Cent famous. You could say “get rich or lie tryin’” helps keep him famous.

Last month a story briefly swept the internet about the rapper suddenly remembering a long-forgotten store of bitcoin, now worth something like $7-8 million. Everyone from TMZ to NPR reported it.

It hit all the right notes: A recognizable celebrity, known for his uncanny business sense and extravagance, who almost by accident discovers millions of dollars he didn't know he had.

In the way most people might find a stray $5 bill in their jeans doing the laundry, 50 Cent becomes a few million dollars richer.

It even checked out: The rapper really did accept online bitcoin payments way back in 2014 for his album “Animal Ambition.” He even tweeted at the time he “forgot I did that.”

The problem? According to sworn testimony, he didn’t actually keep any of the coins. He was just happy to let everyone think he did.

In bankruptcy court documents revealed first by The Blast and also obtained by TechCrunch, Fifty – real name Curtis Jackson – gives away the game that is celebrity self-promotion.

In a “declaration on bitcoins” he acknowledges never having held any of the cryptocurrency. Instead, a third-party contractor that handled his online transactions took the bitcoin payments and immediately converted them to U.S. dollars. Meaning the 700 bitcoins he reportedly made through his album were exchanged when they were worth hundreds of dollars, far from the $10,000 a single coin roughly goes for today.

More interestingly, 50 Cent explains why he let people think he was a sudden bitcoin millionaire, going so far as to post on Instagram a screenshot of the TMZ article that first reported the story and writing: “Not Bad for a kid from South Side, I’m so proud of me.”

According to the documents, he knowingly allowed all the incorrect reports to multiply “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.”

As they say, there’s no such thing as bad publicity. Especially when it’s good publicity.

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

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