Speaking to Pitchfork in 2018, the former Cash Money Records signee claimed that he’d earned at least six figures from crypto alone: “I had Bitcoin back when it was at $300,” he stated matter-of-factly at the time.
That hunch has clearly paid off.
Entitled Blockchain, the 13-track album contains songs with names like “LLC” and also boasts a feature from Moneybagg Yo, one of the largest figures in rap.
In the screen recording, we see a Cash App transaction between Ghazi Shami, EMPIRE’s founder, and Money Man, where Shami is extending a $1 million advance to the rapper entirely in Bitcoin, working out to roughly 14.7 BTC at the time.
In addition to Blockchain’s release, Money Man also launched an NFT collection of the album trailer which, if purchased, also gave fans a discount on the artist’s merch store.
While this kind of promotion is unprecedented, it could be a sign of things to come as crypto and non-fungible tokens go further and further from niche obsession to mainstream topic of interest.
Meek Mill expressed support in the way Money Man handled his advance payout, and if figureheads in the genre begin to go the Bitcoin route, it could serve as the standard way to operate.