MrBeast Holds Twitter Drawing For $10K In Bitcoin

YouTube cut-up MrBeast has brought cryptocurrency to his brand of outlandish philanthropy by offering $10,000 in Bitcoin to one of his Twitter TWTR followers.

What Happened: MrBeast (real name: Jimmy Donaldson) began posting attention-getting stunt videos on Alphabet’s GOOGL YouTube platform in 2012 when he was 13.

Today, the 22-year-old’s channel has nearly 54 million subscribers who tune in to see the star and his posse engage in zany competitions ranging from spending 24 hours in a jail cell to building a giant house made of Legos.

Over the years, MrBeast has taken on a more charitable aspect, albeit in an off-kilter manner, including giving $200,000 to people who lost their jobs due to the COVID-19 pandemic and offering a home to a homeless man. Corporate sponsors finance these random acts of digital video kindness.

In his latest endeavor, MrBeast took to Twitter on Feb. 20 to declare to his 9.8 million followers: “In 24 hours I’m going to give one random person that retweets this tweet $10,000 in Bitcoin! (Yup, gonna experiment with this instead of cash haha) Make sure you follow me so I can dm you if you win :)”

What Happened Next: MrBeast’s tweet generated more than 536,000 likes, more than 987,000 retweets and 24,000 quoted responses ranging from “I like Bitcoin” to “What the f**k is even Bitcoin?” to “Could you send it in $xvg #xvg #vergecurrency instead?” to “That's not even 1/5 of a Bitcoin. What a rip off.”

Whether MrBeast awarded the prize is uncertain — there was no announcement of a winner and an inquiry to the star’s Twitter channel on the results of the competition went unanswered.

Is That the End of the Story? Well, yes and no. The Bitcoin sweepstakes is over, but MrBeast also announced a new app for MrBeast Burger, a nationwide chain of delivery-only ghost kitchens created in conjunction with Robert Earl, the founder and CEO of Planet Hollywood and the driving force behind the Flavortown Kitchen virtual chain tied to Food Network star Guy Fieri.

MrBeast in a scene from his YouTube video “I Spent 50 Hours In Solitary Confinement."