Keenon Dequan Ray Jackson, the rapper who goes by the alias YG, appears to be showing off an impressive stack of $30 million worth of Bitcoin (BTC) in his latest music video.
This disclosure appears to be either tempting, but possibly fake, or sly product placement, as the video features a cold storage device from cryptocurrency wallet provider Ledger prominently in the video. The social team at Ledger jumped right into action as well:
We see you!@YG knows how to secure those bitcoin bags… not your keys, not your coins. — Ledger (@Ledger) February 11, 2022
In one scene of the music video for “Scared Money” featuring J. Cole and Moneybagg Yo, YG is seen holding a Ledger wallet next to a smartphone that displays a wallet app worth over $30.6 million. BTC in it.
While the image could be easily faked, rappers are well known for flaunting their wealth and success, especially in this song, which focuses on spending money, investing, and wearing half a million dollar jewelry around their necks.
YG is a supporter of BTC as he mentioned owning digital gold in several other songs such as 2018’s “Big Bank” as well as in a mid-2021 interview with RollingStone.
During this interview, YG said that he enjoys the ease of holding cryptocurrencies as he can invest his money in the asset class without being distracted from his music career. He drew comparisons with the real estate market, where he would have to spend a lot of time working and learning how to do it successfully.
“I fuck with Bitcoin.[…] I recently got Ethereum and I recently got Dogecoin, but I’ve had bitcoin for about three years now.[…] Bitcoin came along and it was like “what?” and I can just do this and it turns into this?” he said, referring to the asset’s skyrocketing price last year.
Earlier today, in a Reddit post on the r/Bitcoin Reddit community, users were asking questions about YG’s giant BTC stack, with AvoidMyRange stating that “The chance of all of these amounts ending in 0 and cents ending in 0.00 is incredibly small. It’s clearly fake.”
“It’s fake because it’s not even a mockup of the ledger app,” user AKeveryday replied.
Other users saw the funny side of BTC’s YG music-based antics when Redditor Lexstell11 figured out the lyrics to a Big Bank song when BTC was worth around $7,000.
“In YG’s song “Big Bank,” he says, “I could buy her red pants for crypto-3 coins that will pay for your entire semester…” The song was released on May 25, 2018, when BTC was worth $7,459 at the time of closing. So presumably YG paid $132,000 in today’s semester rate for a girl at what I assume was the University of Phoenix. I think about it a lot.”
Related: Year of Sponsorship: Celebrities Who Adopted Cryptocurrency in 2021
Cryptocurrency has attracted a strong cohort of rappers in recent years, with icons such as Jay Z and NFT bull Snoop Dogg playing heavily in the sector. Other notable figures jumping on the feeder include Meek Mill, who bought up Dogecoin amid the hype last year, Nas, who tokenized his music as NFT earlier this year, and Post Malone, who introduced NFT Bored Ape Yacht Club in one of his latest musical clips.
