Rapper launches new $200 million crypto venture and phone company after announcing her shock retirement from music and quitting OnlyFans

Iggy Azalea has found a surprising new career path for herself following her official retirement from the music industry in January.

After a successful stint on OnlyFans that earned her millions, the 34-year-old is now a budding crypto mogul.

She recently launched her own memecoin – which is a type of cryptocurrency inspired by a meme – called Mother Iggy ($MOTHER).

According to CNN, Mother Iggy has already reached market capitalization of about $200 million, making it one of the most popular memecoins of all time.

The most successful memecoin is currently Dogecoin, which has a market cap of about $20 billion.

‘I’m someone that naturally has had so many memes over the course of my career; things go viral on purpose or accidentally,’ Iggy told Fortune.

‘I felt like it was a space I could really engage with in a successful way.’

The Australian star also responded to some of the backlash she’d received from naysayers in the crypto community.

‘They used to laugh at me rapping and I got a number 1 single for 9 weeks straight,’ she posted to X on Sunday, adding, ‘I could bet I know where this is headed… Laugh now, cry later I’m certain.’

Outside of crypto, the Fancy hitmaker has also co-founded her own non-contract telecommunications service called Unreal Mobile.

In a shrewd business move, Iggy has already added the option for Unreal Mobile users to pay for their service using her Mother Iggy currency.

‘Unreal Service for Unreal creatures!!!’ she posted to X this week.

‘The NEW Unreal Mobile site is live now and as promised in addition to standard $ payments we have added crypto (including $MOTHER of course) as a checkout option.’

Iggy is also currently working with a number of entrepreneurs on a crowd-funding platform called Dream Vault.

Ahead of the platform’s launch, Iggy and her partners have reportedly raised seven figures in capital for it.

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‘Dream Vault is a platform that I created so that anybody who has a dream, it’s a place where they can try to achieve it and create a community to help them achieve whatever it is that their goal is,’ she told Forbes. 

The pivot into tech and crypto comes after the Australian rapper formally announced her retirement from the music industry in January.

‘I’ve always been someone who finds my joy in being creative and seeing my ideas come to life. For a long time I used music to deliver my big crazy ideas to the world,’ she wrote in a post to her fans at the time.

‘In truth, what I’ve known for a long time is that I feel more passionately about design and creative direction than I do about songwriting,’ she continued.

‘That’s why I want to let you know that I’m not going to finish my album. It’s been paused for a few months while I was giving direction for a different project and in truth I just haven’t felt the urge to go back to it.

‘I feel really happy & passionate in my day to day life when my mind’s focused on that and so I want to stick to what’s undeniably best for me.’

Despite being labeled a ‘one-hit wonder’ by her critics, Iggy has built a staggering eight-figure empire for herself and has boasted that she ‘never has to work another day’ in her life.

From music royalties and touring to endorsement deals, real estate investments and a lucrative move into OnlyFans, the Australian hip-hop star now has an eye-watering net worth that would put many of her fellow rappers to shame. 

Unlike countless other top 40 artists, Iggy was smart enough to retain ownership of all her master recordings and publishing catalogue.

She later sold the rights to her music in 2022 to Domain Capital for an eight-figure sum.

This included her signature hit Fancy, along with songs like Black Widow, Kream and her Ariana Grande collab, Problem.

After getting backlash from fans on social media for the sale, Iggy clapped back: ‘I sold a portion of my catalogue to who I wanted, for an amount that means I don’t have to work another day in my life.

‘I love y’all down but the masters conversation is a little beyond most of your understanding of business.’

She added: ‘It means that a portion of songs I sold to a company now owns them. In exchange, they paid me what they would have earned in my lifetime, upfront in one lump sum.’

Less than two months after the sale, the former chart topper joined OnlyFans in a move that was estimated to have raked in tens of millions of dollars.

However, she has since departed the platform to focus on her Telegram channel, which she’s currently using to promote her crypto venture.

She took down almost all of her OnlyFans posts in early July and told fans, ‘Hey everyone! I enjoyed our conversations so much – but I’ve decided I don’t have enough time to chat via this page anymore. You can find me on Telegram.’

Before selling her music catalogue, Iggy was still raking in the big bucks from royalties, touring and endorsement deals.

She previously said she got paid between $150,000 and $200,000 per show.

With about 17 million followers on Instagram, the bombshell also takes home a pretty penny for spruiking brands like Fashion Nova and Lounge Underwear.

She also released her own perfume, selling direct to consumers via her website, and partnered with BH Cosmetics to launch her own limited-edition makeup range.

At the peak of her fame in the years that followed the release of Fancy, Iggy made sure to cash in on her popularity in her native Australia.

In 2015, she was paid about AU$500,000 (about US$332,000) to front a Bonds underwear campaign.

The following year, she signed a mega-bucks deal to be a judge on The X Factor Australia.

In 2022, Iggy successfully flipped her Los Angeles mansion, selling it for $6 million and pocketing about $800,000.

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Iggy made music history in 2014 with Fancy, which topped the Billboard Hot 100 for seven weeks and sold more than nine million copies.

In 2017, Billboard crowned it the biggest hit by a female rapper in history, beating out Nicki Minaj and Missy Elliott.

While she was never able to replicate the success of Fancy, Iggy has notched up a number of gold and platinum-certified hits since, including Black Widow, Kream, Team, and Sally Walker.

At the height of her fame, she became one of the most in-demand artists to collaborate with, and ended up working with A-list names like Britney Spears, Jennifer Lopez, Tyga, and Demi Lovato.

Iggy came from humble beginnings, growing up in Mullumbimby, NSW, a town with a population of just 3,000 people.

She was born with the name Amethyst Amelia Kelly, and grew up in a modest mudbrick home with her artist parents. 

She left Australia when she was just 16 years old and moved to Miami to pursue her dream of becoming a famous rapper.

Iggy got her big break after signing with T.I.’s label and released a string of minor hip-hop hits before hitting the big time in 2014.