Rapper 50 Cent partners with BitPay for new album release

It probably won’t surprise many people that the man behind Get Rich or Die Tryin’ has his eye on bitcoin. Best known in the mainstream as a Grammy-winning rapper with over 30 million album sales to his name, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson is almost equally famous in the investment world for a series of shrewd investments that have helped him build up a fortune estimated at $140 million.

By adding a BitPay-powered payment option for new album Animal Ambition, 50 Cent has become one of the best-known musicians to publicly experiment with bitcoin. The online store is built around the Shopify engine, which has offered optional bitcoin support since November of 2013. Although frequently used by smaller merchants and independent musicians, 50 Cent joins a relatively small list of truly famous performers to officially accept bitcoin as payment.

It’s worth noting that 50 Cent has quite a track record for picking up on early trends. In 2003, he made a multimillion dollar deal with VitaminWater maker Glacéau, and picked up a reported $100 million when the company was later bought by CocaCola for $4.1 billion. It’s not known if 50 Cent actually has holdings in bitcoin, or if he’ll be keeping a percentage of the BTC from his album sales. BitPay’s model generally involves an instant conversion to local currency, limiting customer exposure to bitcoin’s well-known volatility.

50 Cent isn’t the first hip-hop celebrity to toy with the idea of accepting bitcoin. Late last year, Snoop Dogg (or, as he’s currently known, Snoop Lion) announced that he would be accepting bitcoin for a forthcoming album. That album has yet to materialize, but the concept may well prove prescient for future hip-hop releases.