50 Cent Denies Owning Bitcoins

Rapper 50 Cent said in court papers that he has never owned bitcoins, countering recent news reports that said he kept a secret stash of the volatile digital currency worth millions of dollars during his 2015 bankruptcy.

The entertainer, whose real name is Curtis James Jackson III, said in sworn testimony he didn’t deny the media reports because “the press coverage was favorable and suggested that I had made millions of dollars.”

The coverage caught the attention of Justice Department officials, who reached out to Mr. Jackson’s lawyers with questions about the news articles. The Justice Department officials work for a division that monitors bankruptcy cases to make sure that people who file for bankruptcy list all of their assets in public court records.

People who hide assets during bankruptcy risk steep fines and jail time.

In his testimony, Mr. Jackson blamed the misunderstanding on his record label, G-Unit Records Inc., which has allowed fans to buy albums, hats, headphones, T-shirts and other merchandise with bitcoins since 2014. The payment option made him one of the music industry’s first artists to accept cryptocurrency for online sales, he said.

That fueled speculation last month among gossip websites that the currency’s escalation in value in recent years made him rich. Mr. Jackson said a third party converts the bitcoins into U.S. dollars before transferring the money to his company.

“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…even if the report is based on a misunderstanding of the facts or contains outright falsehoods. I do not personally own, and have not owned, either a bitcoin account or any bitcoins,” he said in testimony filed Friday to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Hartford, Conn.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Jr Trader Alexander Kumanov

Original Post: 50 Cent Denies Owning Bitcoins

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