💰Money Man gets Paid $1 Million in Bitcoin
American rapper becomes the first artist ever to be paid an advance by a Record Label in Bitcoin
Happy Friday everyone!
No this headline isn’t a joke.
Yesterday, 35-year American rapper Tysen Jay Bolding, aka,‘Money Man’ became the first artist ever to be paid an advance of $1 Million in Bitcoin, by a Record Label.
American label EMPIRE, has had ‘Money Man’ on its roster for a while now, and paid the Atlanta-based artist & cryptocurrency investor Money Man ahead of the release of his new album *wait for it* Blockchain, which is out today ⏯
Founder and CEO Ghazi Shami posted a video of the transaction on Instagram this week, which was made via the Cash App, which also recently launched Cash App Studios, an initiative aimed at funding artists’ projects- something we wrote about a few weeks back 👇🏻
So how did a fairly successful rapper out of Atlanta get involved in Bitcoin, to the point that his latest album is called Blockchain?
Speaking on a panel called “Pay Me In Bitcoin” at the Bitcoin Conference in June, Money Man explained that in around 2014 when he first heard about it, he started investing early.
"It was just a few hundred dollars, and it went up and skyrocketed, so a lot of times, I get paid for features in Bitcoin."
The early investments in Bitcoin have been so successful for ‘Money Man’, that he was able to buy out his previous Record Label contract, and go independent as an artist, before signing onto Empire Records 📝
Shami founded San Francisco-based EMPIRE in 2010 and the company has played a key role in launching the careers of multi-platinum, Grammy Award-winning artists like Kendrick Lamar, Cardi B, DRAM and Anderson Paak 🏆
Taking about how easy Bitcoin has made payments to artists, Shami spoke vividly about the cryptocurrency at the Bitcoin conference in Miami earlier this year 👇🏻
The traditional financial sector is a nine to five or nine to six sector and the music business is a 24/7 operation.
I’ve always found it pretty absurd that if I cut a record deal on Friday, I couldn’t pay somebody until Monday via wire or ACH transfer.
Talking about how cryptocurrencies help with micro-payments towards artists, Shami said:
We’re also headed into a direction where we make thousands and thousands of micro payments every month for … artist agreements, royalty splits. It only felt natural to be able to move to a system that’s transparent.
“Ultimately, the peer-to-peer nature of it and how fast you can get money to somebody is what’s most important and that’s why I’m investing a lot of time and energy into it”
With Bitcoin touching fresh All-Time-Highs earlier this week of around $68k, it seems like stories like these make it fairly obvious of the inevitability of Bitcoin and Crypto-Currencies as an internet native medium of exchange.
The best part about all of this? The powerful shift of narrative.
Bitcoin and Crypto-Currencies in general have long been and continue to be viewed from the skeptical lens by the general population, however the steady assimilation into Pop Culture, and especially Music is a sign of its inevitable mass adoption 📈
A rapper going by the name of ‘Money Man’ getting paid in Bitcoin for his album titled ‘Blockchain’ is all the banter I need for this weekend 😅
Have a good one folks 🍻