McDonald's Unveils Limited Edition MacCoin to Celebrate 50 Years of the Big Mac | Hacker News Reader

McDonald's Unveils Limited Edition MacCoin to Celebrate 50 Years of the Big Mac

news.mcdonalds.com

11 pointswhalesalad15 comments

A funny perspective from a Venezuela employee

https://i.imgur.com/i6tLCrv.jpg

It took me a while to realise this was not a cryptocurrency.

Some background, The Economist uses the Big Mac as a measure of purchasing power: https://www.economist.com/news/2018/07/11/the-big-mac-index

Will this effect the Big Mac index?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index

Yes. It'll now be forex currency pairs instead of just an index - find them on your nearest exchange.

It will likely be more valuable than a Big Mac though, due to its collectable and limited nature. Just because it can be exchanged for a Big Mac, doesn't mean that's its value. Just like silver dollars are worth more than a dollar.

"The Collectible MacCoin is First Fully Food-Backed Global Currency" - The PR hype train is in full effect with that sentence.

Like most PR spin, I understand what they are trying to state with "Food-backed" but it's such a meaningless parameter*

* except to PR teams, of course!

"The MacCoin transcends currencies to commemorate our global iconic burger while giving customers all over the world a chance to enjoy a Big Mac on us"

there you go...

So it's collectable, but has "value" through a promotion where you surrender the collectible for one sandwich only available through 2018. This is so weird, why would anyone redeem them?

It's like McDonald's thought it'd be fun to join the make-your-own-currency craze, but wanted to ensure it didn't have any actual tradeable financial value that could subject them to banking regulations.

Or, it's just a collectible gimmick to drive sales just like all the other toys and promotions they execute throughout the years.

Only a small % will ever be redeemed. Most will try to collect all 5.

> This is so weird, why would anyone redeem them?

I'm confused, you would keep it?

It's just a buy-one-get-one-free campaign.

I think it's a safe assumption that they'll be worth more as collectibles than as burgers.

Why? There's going to be 6.2 million of them. Who's going to want to buy them? And more importantly, who's going to go through the trouble of keeping them and selling them for any kind of minor profit?

6.2 million globally. I can't find figures for total number of Big Macs sold each day globally, but I'm guessing it's in the ball park of 6.2 million. The coins will likely be gone before the day is out.

Consider the following factoids in the context of exchange rates and PPP. In other words, the ratio of foreign customers to domestic is probably far greater than foreign revenue to domestic revenue.

Factoids:

* Roughly 1.5 million Big Macs sold each day in the U.S. alone. https://expandedramblings.com/index.php/mcdonalds-statistics...

* U.S. accounts for less than half of global revenues. See https://www.statista.com/topics/1444/mcdonalds/ and https://www.statista.com/statistics/219453/revenue-of-the-mc...

* They serve over 60 million customers globally each day. http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2012/04/30/13-Disturb...

This is so weird, why would anyone redeem them?

Because you eat at McDonalds every day and have cupholders full of the MacCoins in your car.

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