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THE BIG MAC STANDARD

In 1967, Jim Delligatti sold the first Big Mac in Uniontown, Pennsylvania for $0.45. It is still the same sandwich: two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a sesame-seed bun. Today it costs around $6.

Three exhibits. THE BURGER. THE DOLLARS it costs — a pile that keeps growing. THE BITCOIN it costs — a pile that collapses, from a mountain of whole coins in 2010 to a few small chips today. Below one whole coin, the pile switches units: each chip is 1,000 sats (a hundred-thousandth of a bitcoin). Scrub the timeline and watch the stack melt.

A NOTE ON SIZES

Burger and pile sizes on this page are dramatized for effect — this is satire, not a scale model. The prices are the real part, and they're bad enough.

THE NUMBERS

· TODAY (EST) — latest Economist Big Mac Index US price, drifted forward daily at recent food-away-from-home inflation (~3%/yr). Marked EST because McDonald's prices vary by store.

· SATS — today's estimated US price divided by the live BTC price (Binance stream, Coinbase fallback). Priced in bitcoin, the Big Mac keeps getting cheaper.

· WORK FOR ONE — minutes at the US federal minimum wage of the era. 1967: ~19 min. Today: ~50 min.

· DOLLAR KEPT — what $1 still buys vs 1967, measured in Big Macs.

· Pre-2000 prices from press archives (1967 $0.45 · 1975 $0.75 · 1986 $1.60 · 1995 $2.32); 2000→ from The Economist's index.

SOURCES

The Economist Big Mac Index (CC BY 4.0) · Snopes on the shrink myth · US DOL minimum-wage history

Not affiliated with McDonald's. Big Mac is a trademark of McDonald's Corporation — used here nominatively, as The Economist has since 1986. Not financial advice; one delicious data point.