The Big Sats Index shows that one McDonald’s burger now costs less than 10,000 satoshis. That is cheaper than ever before. Gold may buy less and less bitcoin (BTC) this year, but another measure of the crypto’s strength has hit a historic milestone.
Data from on-chain analytics service Ecoinometrics shows that on March 17, the Big Sats Index saw a US McDonald’s Big Mac cost less than 10,000 satoshis for the first time in this pricing’s history.
Bitcoin Versus Fiat Is Hard To Digest
The Big Sats Index measures how much a Big Mac costs according to the famous Big Mac Index from The Economist. Launched in 1986, the latter initially came as a tool to determine the strength of different fiat currencies. The bitcoin equivalent is some form of a tongue-in-cheek commentary on both food and fiat.
Saifedean Ammous argues in “The Bitcoin Standard” that both the trillion-dollar forex market and the coming of the nutritionally controversial burger are the results of the abandonment of the gold standard and the embracing of money with no supply limit. The resulting desire has now become an instant gratification at the expense of long-term prosperity.
Nevertheless, the numbers are now speaking for themselves. At about $60,000, one bitcoin buys up to 10,402 Big Macs, according to Ecoinometrics. One burger, therefore, sets a bitcoin holder back just 9,614 satoshis.
The March 2020 cross-asset crash shortly took the cost of a Big Mac to more than 100,000 satoshis by comparison. The last time the price was 1 million satoshis was in mid-2016. According to previous reports, November 2020 was a time when one bitcoin could buy around 3,000 burgers.
Racing To The Bottom
Big Sats is just an example that captures BTC proponents’ core argument that fiat currency ultimately trends to zero against bitcoin since fiat has no limits to its supply. In 2020, that thesis was born due to the coronavirus epidemic with governments expanding the money supply of their national currencies quicker than at any time outside hyperinflation.
An incredible counterpoint to the trend that came to light this week is the MicroStrategy stock (MSTR) that gained rapidly in the second half of 2020 after CEO Michael Saylor started changing the company’s balance sheet to bitcoin.
The host of The Investor’s Podcast, Preston Pysh, circulated data on social media showing a peak for MSTR last month before BTC’s continued surge that coincided with a widespread sell-off among the tech stocks, including those that have bitcoin exposure.
