Pop stars tend to be extremely busy people who don’t have the time or inclination to read up on the latest technology trends — especially if it doesn’t relate to music. Amusingly, this willful ignorance ended up costing British singer Lily Allen over $100 million in Bitcoin payments. Oops.
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Bitcoin is a digital currency used to pay for a variety of goods and services. In recent years, the curency’s value has sky-rocketed to around $1000 per ‘coin’.
In one of her most recent Tweets, pop singer Lily Allen admitted to losing a colossal fortune when she refused to perform a virtual gig in the massive multiplayer online computer game Second Life for a digital treasure trove of the online currency.
About 5 years ago someone asked me to stream a gig live on second life for hundreds of thousNds of bitcoins, “as if” I said. #idiot #idiot
— Lily Allen (@lilyallen) January 5, 2014
Assuming Allen isn’t using hyperbole, her claim of “hundreds of thousands” of bitcoins would translate to at least $180 million in today’s money.
In Allen’s defense, bitcoins weren’t nearly as valuable five years ago, but the appreciation potential has always been there. Oh well, at least she can take solace in the fact that she isn’t an Australian musician.
[Via Metro]
Comments
4 responses to “Why It Pays To Keep Abreast Of Technology”
I think you mean Second Life…. not Half Life…
Also, is it really a loss when she didn’t have it in the first place? Not to mention, sure she may have received ‘hundreds of thousands’ of bitcoins (Highly doubtful at the time), but who would she sell them too? Just because the market says they are worth this much doesn’t mean there is a buyer for them.
What a ridiculous article.
You can buy practically anything with bitcoins these days, including luxury cars and houses.
I tend to agree with Red Candle – she didn’t lose the bitcoins, she didn’t accept the opportunity.
In 2008 who amongst us would have accepted bitcoins as payment? In fact, it’s only recently they have made their way out of a very VERY small niche to become useable for buying luxury cars and houses….
Having “hundreds of thousoands” of bitcoins 5 years ago was about as useful as having hundreds of thousands of monopoly dollars…..
Or like buying Apple when it was $5 a share – if only we all had the 20/20 vision that comes from hindsight….
Really how many of us had heard of bitcoins 5 years ago?
Get off bitcoin, there’s new cryptos in town…