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First, he forgot about owning millions of dollars' worth of bitcoin and then bragged about it. Now, 50 Cent, who filed for bankruptcy bankruptcy, says that he never owned any of the digital currency after all, NPR.org reported. The rapper, whose given name is Curtis Jackson, acknowledged in a 2014 Reddit discussion that he had accepted bitcoin in partial payment for his Animal Ambition album. A TMZ report subsequently reported an estimate of the amount he received was about 700 bitcoins. At the time, individual units of the volatile cryptocurrency would have been worth a few hundred dollars each, but today, bitcoin is valued at around $10,000. In a (since deleted) Instagram post in January, the rapper bragged about his discovered windfall, saying he "forgot" that he had owned it. However, in a bankruptcy filing late last week, lawyers for the artist told the court that the recent media reports "falsely stated" that he owned any bitcoin at all.

Student-loan debt collectors accused of misleading borrowers would get protection under a proposal from the Trump Administration, Bloomberg News reported. The Department of Education may issue a statement that federal law prohibits state governments from regulating companies that collect student debt on the department’s behalf, according to documents reviewed by Bloomberg. The proposal, which would reverse the department’s position in 2016, could aid publicly traded companies such as Navient Corp. and Nelnet Inc., which collect monthly payments and counsel borrowers. Former President Barack Obama, whose administration tried to tighten oversight of the companies, was too aggressive in those efforts, Mick Mulvaney, the new chief of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has said. More than 1 million Americans annually default on loans made directly by the department, federal data show. 

A decade after the global financial crisis, household debts are considered by many to be a problem of the past after having come down in the U.S., U.K. and many parts of the euro area. But in some corners of the globe — including Switzerland, Australia, Norway and Canada — large and rising household debt is percolating as an economic problem, the Wall Street Journal reported. Each of those four nations has more household debt — including mortgages, credit cards and car loans — today than the U.S. did at the height of last decade’s housing bubble. At the top of the heap is Switzerland, where household debt has climbed to 127.5 percent of gross domestic product, according to data from Oxford Economics and the Bank for International Settlements. The International Monetary Fund has identified a 65 percent household debt-to-GDP ratio as a warning sign. In all, 10 economies have debts above that threshold and rising fast, with the others including New Zealand, South Korea, Sweden, Thailand, Hong Kong and Finland.

The Trump administration is looking to clarify when Americans can discharge student loans in bankruptcy, responding to concerns that more borrowers will be stuck under huge debt burdens for years, the WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Since 1998, federal law has prohibited Americans from discharging student loans made by the federal government, except in extremely rare circumstances. Congress expanded the prohibition to cover private student loans in 2005. Only borrowers who file for bankruptcy and prove an “undue hardship” in repaying their loans are permitted to have their loans expunged. Congress never defined “undue hardship,” leaving it to bankruptcy judges to decide case by case. They set a high bar. Very few borrowers have had their loans expunged in bankruptcy, and student-borrower advocates say many others don’t even try. The Education Department, in a public notice set to be released today, said that it was considering whether to clarify what factors should be considered in determining whether borrowers meet the threshold for undue hardship. Read more. (Subscription required.) 

The ABI Consumer Commission's Committee on Case Administration and the Estate is considering the important issue of student loan debt and bankruptcy, and the Commission is reviewing a paper submitted by ABI's Consumer Bankruptcy Committee at its last open meeting. Click here to review the submission.

Discussion and analysis of options available to student loan borrowers are available in the updated and revised Graduating with Debt: Student Loans under the Bankruptcy Code, Second Edition!