As the world continues to evolve, the music industry is keeping a close eye on it. Tysen Jay Bolding, known professionally as The Money Man, has been involved in the music industry since signing with Cash in 2017. After releasing three solid mixtapes with the label in less than six months, the Atlanta rapper he paid $250,000 to terminate his contract in hopes of receiving 100% profit from his music. Although his record label disagreed with his decision, the money man’s next move was the best yet.
After returning to his Black Circle Family label, Money Man decided to partner with the distribution empire for his new music. This opportunity worked in his favor, especially as he had climbed the charts four times since May 2019. His hit single “24” featuring QC megastar Lil Baby garnered over 61 million views on YouTube. /p>
In addition to his music career reaching monumental numbers, the money man started getting involved in cryptocurrencies before the world caught up with him. In November 2020, he became the first artist to receive a seven-figure advance for his next project in cryptocurrency, specifically Bitcoin, from Empire and his CEO Ghazi. From nfts to speaking at crypto conferences in the united states, the money man is no longer just known as a rapper, he can now be considered a crypto expert.
In honor of Financial Literacy Month, we decided to take some time to learn more about cryptocurrencies and why it’s so important to get involved. check out our full interview below.
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in 2013, what was the factor that led you to finally invest in cryptocurrencies?
The driving factor, I can’t really say because the cryptocurrency of 2013 was more on the dark side. it wasn’t really for everyone like it is now.
did your career as an artist prepare you in any way for your crypto journey?
no, the streets prepared me for that, and the internet. cryptocurrency was more for criminals and swipers. the average person knew nothing about crypto. they were just people trying to go unnoticed. Crypto started out as an infamous form of payment where the government couldn’t trace it. back then, it was on the internet and it was money that the government couldn’t track or centralize.
help me with the lingo: crypto, coins, tokens, icos. what is the difference between all of them?
crypto is short for encryption. the crypto community as a whole started encrypting their money if you know what I’m saying. if you encrypt a site, the site is encrypted where only people with certain knowledge can read it. but now, it is extended to be the currency for all. crypto and tokens and things of that nature can sometimes be the same thing. you can have community tokens where someone made a token or meme coins, things of that nature. so everything is more or less the same but it’s different.
many people have difficulty knowing how much to invest. How do you decide how much to invest in crypto on a limited budget?
I suggest dca. DCA is dollar cost averaging, which means you don’t put all of your money in at once. The dollar cost average is if you get a $500 paycheck a week then you would be putting down $25, $30. Like I said, never invest what you can’t afford to lose because nothing in life is guaranteed. In addition, you want to time the market. Right now we may be in a bear market. every 4 years there is a bear market instead of what we call the halving. During the halving, they cut a lot of coins in half, which makes the price of coins go up and up. this means more profit for you. but it is a game of patience. once you invest, you have to wait a while unless you know how to really time the market. when you know it’s down and you know a bull market is coming. the bull market is the opposite of the bear market, which means everything is going crazy and all the money is piling up.
Now that you’re better informed about financial education, what are some things in your career that you’d like to know sooner?
I wish I would have put a lot more money into cryptocurrencies because cryptocurrencies are in historic amounts. coins that cost $.01 went up to $5. so that’s a thousand x or more. so i wish i had dumped almost all my money into crypto and then snatched my money in terms of profits. but I did enough so I can’t complain.
but when it comes to rap, my career as a rapper was slow. most people’s careers rise to the top very fast, and then you fall harder because you rise so fast that you never had a chance to hold your ground. my career is still going up, i never had a peak yet. so when it comes to money, I always knew how to handle money. I knew how to handle money when I was 13 years old. It’s nothing to look back on with money management. I don’t waste or have vices or things like that.
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during the pandemic, you created a telegram chat called “big crypto money” with more than 56,000 members. why did you create this group? what do you hope this chat will become one day?
I created the group to let people know about the transition I feel the money is going through. so you know, against them in the different types of cryptos. a lot of people only know about dogecoin and bitcoin so i created the chat just to let them know that there are thousands of other coins you can make money with. Besides, I’m trying to control the market.
I want to be able to have the kind of influence where I can tell 60,000 people to invest in this currency and we all make money together, instead of people just jumping into something blindly. just like amc did during the pandemic where 40-50k people got together and they all invested their money together and moved the price. then they were able to snatch his money and become millionaires together. I want to be able to have the same influence and power.
As the first artist in history to be paid in bitcoin for their advance, was it difficult to convince empire to pay you in crypto? What are the pros and cons of the payment method?
Nope. it was hard for the empire to convince me because i already had a lot of bitcoins, and bitcoin was at an all time high. bitcoin was at $69k which is an all-time high. We all know you don’t take money at its peak. but what I did was I doubled down and took it anyway because money couldn’t pay for that kind of promotion. that kind of promotion put me in all kinds of financial doors. It didn’t just make me look like a dumb rapper. I knew not to take it at its peak, but it just so happened that I had to take it at its peak due to the timing of my album. I actually lost on that deal, but you can say I won because of the promotion.
what are some financial tips you would suggest for new artists as their careers start to pick up?
You want to find ways to generate your own income because if someone else brings in most of the income or most of the income for you, then they control your entire career. that’s the worst thing that can happen to an artist or a creator. creators like to do things in their own time and control their own careers. but if you have someone putting up all the money for you, then you’re going to have a hard time because they’re going to control everything because they put up all the money.
I talk to young people who are 14 or 15 years old. you have to be prepared to establish how you are going to earn money or generate income when you are very young. not when you turn 21 or 18 when you think life gets serious. you have to start around 14 or 15 years old to figure out what you’re going to do. you’re really supposed to start younger than that, but I don’t want to be hard on anyone. In American society, we start late. we want to figure things out once we turn 18, 19, 20… all the way to 25. you’re supposed to have your career in mind around 12, 13 and 14.
nba players start playing basketball at age 7. It is very rare that you have an NBA player who starts playing at 17 years old. You have exceptions to the rules, but most NBA players play from 11, 10 and 9 years old. guess what? they are billionaires when they are 22 or 23 years old. so the sooner you start, the better off you’ll be.
more and more artists are starting to get involved with ntfs and the metaverse. what are your thoughts on nfts and why are they a good investment?
90% of nfts are not a good investment. most nfts are losing money. only nfts with strong communities are making money. for example boring monkeys or, like, world of women and things of that nature. you want to investigate the nfts you’re getting into. many nfts have hype as soon as they launch, then crash. It’s like crypto, everything works in cycles. first bitcoin going up, then altcoins, then you have metaverse and gaming coins, then you have nfts.
so nfts are showing up because bitcoins are down right now. money flows through all sectors and then out of there. nfts will crash in a minute, and only the ones with the proper utility will be worth some money. anything digital is a long-term investment. digital is taking over the world.
While many charge for their knowledge, you continue to educate the public for free. Why is that?
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I feel like the people who are in charge of their knowledge never make money from the knowledge they give people. they make money from people who just pay them, and people never make money. I could show you how to do this, and I’d get thousands of people to pay me $100, and I’d make a million dollars. I got rich from people, I didn’t get rich from what I’m teaching you, so it doesn’t make sense to me. I got rich with what I tell you, so I don’t have to charge you for it. I’ll charge you some stuff, but like I said, I got rich off the stuff I tell you, so I don’t have to charge.
Most people have to get paid because they didn’t get rich from the things they tell you. people don’t use common sense. they just pay for something they think will work for them and they don’t miss the money. it’s only $100, but they’re really making someone rich in front of their face.
his most recent blockchain project was inspired by cryptocurrencies. Will all the projects you publish always be inspired by cryptocurrencies?
yes, because my name is money man, and I’m dealing with money type things. my next song is called ‘whale games’ because you know we move the market. when it comes to urban crypto, i move the market, so i would be considered a whale in the urban community. so i’m calling my next ep whale games which comes out on the 29th so make sure y’all pick it up. but ‘whale game’ is the new one because you know it’s whales and crypto, wolves of wall street, but we mess with the males.
many artists hope to follow in your footsteps, for example meek mill who has expressed frustration with his label. Do artists come to you for support and wisdom?
Emerging artists do, but established artists probably don’t want me to know their finances, which I understand. but, with the relationship that I have with certain labels, it would probably be better for them to contact me because that’s what I do. I solve problems regarding contracts and things like that. I write my own contract, I do a lot of my own legal work. I only bring lawyers when dealing with big labels and fifty page contracts that you may not understand. but for the most part, I try to stay out of those situations.
artists always think, well, they did it to him, they won’t do it to me. they do it to everyone, it’s been going on since the beginning of music. so until people start communicating with knowledgeable people, it will keep happening. every artist complains. I haven’t seen an artist who doesn’t complain.
I am always open to advice from someone or someone to help me because I listen. I learn from other people’s mistakes. I once posted on twitter, ‘most people say, ‘nah, I have to learn from my own mistake’. so you have to let people learn from their own mistakes.
The top three books that everyone should read in their lifetime?
“the richest man in babylon”: I definitely read it twice. ‘the power of no’ is one. the third… I don’t know… I can’t say the third.
What advice can you give to artists who find themselves in a bad spot with their labels but are looking to cash in on their music?
You just have to figure it out the best way you can. that is when the gift of the word has to come. Record labels can have you on lifetime contracts. the artists need to come together and form some kind of entity that the record labels can’t break up or put in between all the artists. It’s not like record labels have five or 10 successful artists making millions every year, it’s one or two per label. then, they change them after a certain amount of time.
artists just need to join and go with their own distribution or invest with independent labels. the majors need to make money because they foot the brunt of the bill, but they don’t need to be killing artists. it has to be kind of a 50/50 royalty rate. it is always fair to break bread with someone who is laying down money for you. but they’re getting loud, they’re really outdoing themselves. they are making billions of dollars behind our backs.
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