Lily Allen turned down chance to become a BILLIONAIRE after refusing 200,000 Bitcoins to play 2009 gig

LILY Allen missed the chance to be a billionaire after rejecting payment in lucrative Bitcoins.

The popstar said she refused to sing on an online video game in 2009 when she was offered "hundreds of thousands" of units of the web currency.

If she had taken an offer of 200,000 Bitcoin her haul would be worth an eye-watering £1.6billion in today's prices.

In a newly unearthed tweet from 2014, she wrote: "About 5 years ago someone asked me to stream a gig live on second life for hundreds of [thousands] of bitcoins, 'as if' I said. #idiot #idiot".

It would have put her among the richest pop stars in the world — even overtaking Madonna and Beyonce's combined worth of £550million according to Forbes.

Lily is not the only one to make a Bitcoin blunder.

We told on Monday about Brit IT worker James Howells, who threw away his computer containing £74million-worth of the "digital gold";.

Bitcoin was first created in early 2009 and was effectively worthless.

But it was soon picked up as a way of trading in often illicit products like drugs and weapons on the dark web due to its privacy.

Now it has been given a cleaner image as commodities like London property and be bought and sold in the secretive method.

The Treasury still has plans to crackdown on the currency to fight online criminals transferring funds without scrutiny.

Detective Inspector Timothy Court, of the Met’s Organised Crime Group, said: “We are seeing criminals using Bitcoin to buy drugs and firearms on the dark web and also laundering money with it.”

On Monday Lily also moaned that she could be homeless at Christmas because her tenants are refusing to move out of her house.

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