What if we stopped measuring Bitcoin's value in dollars — and started measuring it in sandwiches?
Specifically, the BLT. Bacon. Lettuce. Tomato. Toasted, ideally. At roughly $12 a sandwich (your average diner price), the BLT makes a surprisingly useful unit of account. It's tangible. It's delicious. And it reveals something remarkable about what Bitcoin has become.
The BLT as a Unit of Account
Economists love abstract units of account. Gold. Dollars. Consumer price baskets. But we prefer something more satisfying: the BLT Price Index, where 1 BLT = $12.
Why $12? It's the reliable average cost of a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich at a sit-down diner in the United States. Not fancy. Not fast food. Just a solid, honest sandwich that represents real purchasing power.
Using the BLT as our benchmark, we can tell Bitcoin's story in a way that a price chart simply can't. Because nobody emotionally connects with "$100,000." But 8,333 sandwiches? That hits different.
Bitcoin's Journey, Measured in BLTs
2009: The Zero Sandwich Era
When Satoshi Nakamoto mined the genesis block in January 2009, Bitcoin had no market price. It was an idea. A white paper. A cryptographic experiment traded (if at all) between a handful of cypherpunks on a forum.
BLTs you could buy with 1 BTC: 0.
May 22, 2010: Bitcoin Pizza Day (The Sandwich Sacrifice)
On May 22, 2010, Laszlo Hanyecz made the most famous trade in Bitcoin history. He paid 10,000 BTC for two pizzas, valuing each bitcoin at roughly $0.0025.
At that price, you couldn't buy a single BLT with 10 bitcoins, let alone one. You'd need about 4,800 BTC just to cover a $12 sandwich. The era of the sub-BLT Bitcoin.
Oh, and those 10,000 BTC? At 2024 prices, they were worth over 83 million BLTs. We don't recommend thinking about that too hard.
2013: 1 BTC = ~83 BLTs
By late 2013, Bitcoin had its first major bull run, briefly touching $1,000. One bitcoin could now buy approximately 83 BLTs.
That's enough to feed your entire street a solid lunch. The world was starting to take notice. Mt. Gox was still standing. Simpler times.
2017: 1 BTC = ~1,667 BLTs
The year of FOMO. "Crypto" entered the mainstream vocabulary. Your uncle started asking about altcoins at Thanksgiving. Bitcoin reached $20,000 in December, and your BLT count hit 1,667 sandwiches.
That's enough BLTs to open your own diner — and still have leftovers for the whole neighborhood.
2021: 1 BTC = ~5,750 BLTs
Institutional adoption. Corporate treasuries. El Salvador. Bitcoin hit $69,000 in November 2021, which translates to 5,750 BLTs.
At one BLT per day, that's over 15 years of lunch. Covered. By one coin.
2024: 1 BTC = ~8,333 BLTs
Bitcoin crossed $100,000 for the first time in late 2024, post-halving, post-ETF approval. The BLT count hit 8,333 sandwiches.
That's nearly 23 years of daily BLTs. Or enough to cater a very large, very Bitcoin-themed wedding.
What This Actually Tells Us
The BLT Price Index isn't financial advice. It's perspective.
Bitcoin went from an asset that couldn't buy a single sandwich to one that could buy over eight thousand of them in the span of fifteen years. That trajectory — from zero to thousands — is one of the most remarkable wealth preservation stories in financial history, served up with a side of crispy bacon.
The dollar value matters. But the sandwich count makes it real. When you frame Bitcoin's purchasing power in something tangible, the numbers stop being abstract. They become lunch. A lot of lunch.
Want to see today's BLT count in real time?
The BLT Price Index tracks exactly how many BLTs one Bitcoin can buy right now, updated live using current Bitcoin prices.
Check the Live BLT Price Index →
Whether you're stacking sats or stacking sandwiches, the BLT Price Index is here to put Bitcoin's value in perspective. One delicious, toasted, slightly absurd perspective at a time.
Stay crispy. Stay curious. Stack accordingly.
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