Renowned rapper Curtis James Jackson III, better known as “50 Cent” or “Fif,” has vehemently denied any involvement in a $500 million cryptocurrency scam.

Hackers took control of his Twitter account and website, using them to promote a fraudulent crypto token called “GUNIT.” With a following of about 12.9 million, the hackers exploited his popularity to lure investors right into a rug pull.

The scam saw the value of the GUNIT token artificially inflated before being abruptly drained, causing the price to crash to $0.00016. Yesterday, Fif informed his 33 million Instagram followers about the hack, stating that a huge amount of money was stolen from the project.

He shared details of the hack, explaining that Twitter acted quickly to secure his account. “Twitter worked quickly to lock my account back down. Whoever did this made $300,000,000 in 30 minutes.”

He emphasized that he had no connection to the GUNIT token and posted images showing discussions in the crypto community about it.

50 Cent had a brush with the cryptocurrency world back in 2018. He was rumored to have made millions by getting into Bitcoin early. The G-Unit leader even accepted Bitcoin payments for his album “Animal Ambition.”

Reports suggested he earned about 700 bitcoins, then valued at approximately $662 per bitcoin, translating to between $7 million and $8.5 million.

However, Fif soon debunked these claims. In court documents, he denied owning or using Bitcoin. He admitted to accepting Bitcoin payments but said they never generated profits.

This clarification came during his bankruptcy proceedings, where he had to explain the reported earnings. Despite the 2018 rumors, Fif’s involvement in cryptocurrency has been minimal and not as profitable as speculated.

Jai Hamid

Asset management firm Fidelity has made further amendments to its application for an Ethereum (ETH) spot exchange-traded fund (ETF). This move comes as the investment giant and other applicants await the green light from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to commence ETH ETF trading in the United States.

Fidelity Updates S-1 Form – What’s New?

On Friday, June 21, Fidelity amended its Form S-1 Registration Statement with the SEC. This S-1 form is required to register the Ether exchange-trading fund for public sale.

According to the latest filing, FMR Capital, an affiliate of Fidelity, purchased 125,000 shares at a price of around $38 to seed the funds’ basket with $4.7 million. The filing then revealed that the Trust acquired 1,250 Ether tokens using the proceeds of the Seed Baskets.

Furthermore, Fidelity confirmed that it will not participate in Ethereum staking, as initially revealed in late May. The filling read: 

The Trust will not participate in the proof-of-stake validation mechanism of the Ethereum network (i.e., the Trust will not “stake” its ether) to earn additional ether or seek other means of generating income from its ether holdings.

Notably, there was still no mention of fees in Fidelity’s amended S-1 form, which has been a common feature in the application of the other ETF issuers. Bloomberg ETF expert Eric Balchunas discussed the fee situation in a post on X, saying it is likely the issuers are waiting till the last minute or on Blackrock before deciding their fees.

It is worth mentioning that BlackRock has also updated its S-1 form, reporting a seed capital of around $10 million. However, the asset management behemoth did not disclose any fees on its ETH spot ETF.

BlackRock is in.. no fee posted but they did report seeding with $10m (altho I think that may have been known already in prev filing). Anyway that's basically a wrap. Ball in SEC's court now. pic.twitter.com/nbYoJo8Xj4

— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) June 21, 2024

Analyst Double Down On ETF Launch Date

In another post on the X platform, Balchunas revealed nothing significant has occurred to change his prediction on the launch date of the Ethereum spot ETFs. According to the Bloomberg expert, July 2, 2024, remains the expected date for these funds to begin trading in the United States.

Next step: we will see a bunch of amended S-1s filed today, prob later this afternoon. Then ball’s in SEC’s court to let issuers know about any final changes and effectiveness (aka final approval). We holding the line with July 2nd as our over/under for eth ETFs launch date. https://t.co/EmqCVsE0Qe

— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) June 21, 2024

Balchunas mentioned that following the latest round of S-1 amendments, the SEC will have to decide the next course of action. “Then the ball’s in SEC’s court to let issuers know about any final changes and effectiveness (aka final approval),” the ETF analyst said.