Chipotle Will Run $100,000 Bitcoin and Burrito Giveway

Mexican food restaurant chain Chipotle will give away more than $100,000 in Bitcoin as part of an upcoming online promotion.

Promotion Begins April 1st

Chipotle partnered with entrepreneur Stefan Thomas, who lost more than $387 million in Bitcoin earlier this year, to run the promotion.

The giveaway pays homage to Thomas’ attempts to recover his crypto. Each user will have ten attempts to guess a six digit code; if they guess correctly, they will win a prize. There will be three prizes of $25,000 in BTC awarded and fifty prizes of $500 in BTC awarded.

As the contest title suggests, there will also be 10,000 free burritos given away as lesser prizes, with an estimated value of $10 each.

Odds of winning any prize will be determined based on web traffic. Exact Bitcoin amounts will be based on the cryptocurrency’s market value when the promotion begins on April 1, 2021.

The terms of the contest also mention how the company will handle payouts if Bitcoin undergoes a fork. According to those terms, it is the company’s choice whether to include the additional coins in the prize. That said, it is unlikely that Bitcoin will fork before the payout.

The promotion begins on April 1, 2021 and is available to residents of the United States, 18 years or older. The event is part of National Burrito Day, which falls on the first Thursday of April each year. This year, it happens to coincide with April Fools’ Day.

Fast Food and Crypto

“This occasion makes Chipotle the first U.S. restaurant brand to offer a cryptocurrency giveaway to consumers,” the Mexican food restaurant chain noted in a press release.

The chain did not indicate that it had any lasting plans to accept Bitcoin or continue to work with cryptocurrency.

Though Bitcoin advocates have long pressed fast food chains and restaurants to accept Bitcoin, those efforts have had little lasting success. Burger King Russia and KFC Canada have both briefly run crypto-related promotions, but neither lasted for long.

Meanwhile, Starbucks’ ongoing attempts to add support for Bitcoin through Bakkt’s retail payments app could be more persistent, but the feature is still not universally available.

At the time of writing this author held less than $75 of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and altcoins.