The Fast Food Currency With A Market Cap of $150 Million

News

By RC Staff

07 March 2023

In addition to burgers and fries, fast food giant McDonalds would try its hand at tokenization, creating its very own “MacCoin” in 2018. Backed by the Big Mac, every MacCoin could be exchanged for one Big Mac through 2018. Over six million Coins were minted, and collectors began speculating on their long-term value. At one point, prices for particular designs of Mac Coin reached $20, even $30 for a coin.

BTC meets burgers: The MacCoin

Do you remember 2018? Yeah, yeah, the last few years haven’t been kind on anyone’s memory, but try and put yourself back there. It was the year that crypto really hit the mainstream. It was when your dad was calling you to ask how much Bitcoin he should buy, where news anchors were talking about buying the dip, and suddenly literally everyone became a blockchain expert overnight.

Cryptocurrency was an inescapable aspect of conversation that marked much of the year, regardless of interest or occupation. Bitcoin started the year at $17,000, and would spark much of this discussion by its explosive rise in value in late 2017.

The last quarter of 2017 would see Bitcoin rise from around $5,000 in October, to more than $15,000 by January. As the calendar rolled over to 2018, mainstream news cycles had already latched onto the currency and started running stories. While Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies would drop off after this sudden peak, their transition into public consciousness would be permanent.

Incidentally, 2018 also marked the 50 year anniversary of McDonald’s iconic Big Mac burger. To celebrate this occasion, McDonald’s would announce a new promotion starting in August: The MacCoin.

Wait, does this actually have utility?

With every purchase of a Big Mac after August 2nd, customers would receive one MacCoin. From then until the end of the year, MacCoins could be traded in for one Big Mac at participating locations. Clearly a riff on Bitcoin’s sudden thrust into the zeitgeist, McDonald’s would advertise the MacCoin as “a limited edition global currency backed by the internationally iconic Big Mac.”

Additionally, the coins had collectible value beyond their utility as a currency. Five different designs were produced, each being a particular decade of the Big Mac’s life. Flowers for the 70s, abstract corpo-art for the 90s, phones and emojis for the 2010s, et cetera, et cetera.

It would be this contrast between collectability and utility that drove the eventual resale value of the MacCoins, and yes, these did resell, for more than the burger they came with.

It belongs in a museum!

See, when you got a MacCoin in your McDonald’s bag, it came packaged in a small plastic bag. This would protect it from all the fry grease and special sauce, but to exchange the coin, you’d need to take it out of the protective plastic.

Coin collectors would soon begin speculating that the value of unopened coins would skyrocket in the future, after the promotion ended. They believed most consumers were shortsightedly using their MacCoins as intended, simply trading them in for a Big Mac. This meant that the majority of coins circulated would either end up back in McDonald’s hands, or otherwise opened, tarnished, and diminished in value.

The craze got big enough within coin collector circles that several grading houses would actually begin certifying MacCoins. While this was probably a joke for the most part, the coin examined earned a score of MS68, indicating a well made coin with only very minor imperfections.

Their master plan would be to hop on these while they were still being produced, and stockpile mint condition coins to resell in the future. Perusing recent eBay listings shows that this strategy likely didn’t work out, with most coins selling between $2-$5, either a loss or slight profit in most cases.

However, for a brief time during 2018, resellers would take advantage of the hype around the coins, and make money flipping them. Rather than buy en masse and hold for a later date, resellers would focus on particular designs, and resell the ones that proved most popular.

Some MacCoins sold better than others

As previously mentioned, there were five different designs for the MacCoin, each one based on a ten year stretch of the burger’s career. Of these, two would stand out: the 1988-1998 coin, and the 1998-2008. While manufacture and distribution was claimed to be equal, it seems like these coins were either underproduced or underdelivered, at least anecdotally.

A thread of coin collectors during the MacCoin craze points to these coins as the most in demand. While most forum members regarded the coin as little more than a joke, others were claiming they were making good money from flipping the 98-08 coins for several times more than they paid.

Even now, these coins are still listed for the highest prices on eBay, and achieving the highest sales. Forum members who claimed to have insider access at McDonald’s locations insisted that there was no difference in distribution between designs, but the evidence and demand seems to prove otherwise.

By the end of 2018, prices would begin to come tumbling down, as the realization hit that there were tons of unopened MacCoins laying around. Originally, speculators believed that because MacCoins could be exchanged for an actual burger, people would be eager to get rid of them. Unlike past collectibles which tended to be quite oversupplied after the promotion ended, there was a significant chance these would actually be rare.

In this case, however, it seemed like laziness would win out. Most people simply couldn’t be bothered to trade their MacCoins in, or even take them out of the packaging. Collectors who thought they were ahead of the curve realized that they were actually in a quite sizable majority, and began rushing to exchange their coins for a Big Mac while they still could.

The arrival of 2019 would completely torpedo the price, as listings for the coin skyrocketed. Most sales would be recorded at around the $3 mark, likely to stubborn collectors who took the whole “be greedy when others are fearful” thing to heart.

In the end, six million coins would be produced and distributed. At just $4 for a Big Mac and the accompanying coin, the value of the MacCoin would grow to $20 at some points, even $30 and allegedly some coins sold for $100. While those days are gone, it’s a fun example of a token with real and delicious utility, coming from an unlikely place.

What do you think? Did you try your hand at flipping MacCoins during the craze? While in hindsight the whole thing seems a little silly, it was a good flip at the time.

The contrast between collectors and resellers is a valuable lesson as well. The collectors adamantly believed that their coins would be valuable in the future, and were eager to stock up on as many unopened coins as they could as an investment. The resellers on the other hand, saw an opportunity to buy a burger and make 20 bucks.

Sometimes, its okay to just make 20 bucks.