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The HOT NEW THING in peer-to-peer crypto-currency! Bitcoins are currency backed by math! It's like the gold standard, but instead of beardy prospectors, we use video cards!!! Everybody freak out, it's the Cryptonomicon come to life! It's like Lindens, but without the doll clothes! It's the most dangerous open-source project in the history of electrons!

When folks ask you, with a confused look, "So... what are bitcoins good for?" you can point proudly to your shiny, embroidered, bought-this-bitcoins-badge-with-Bitcoins badge and say "Why, you can use bitcoins to buy this badge proving you used bitcoins to buy it!" And let's face it, this kind of recursive jackassery is the entire reason Randy and I started doing Nerd Merit Badges in the first place.

So: If you send us one bitcoin (that's 1฿, to be Unicode-y about it), we will send you one "bought this bitcoins badge with bitcoins" merit badge. Like all our nerd merit badges, these are round, 1.5" in diameter, and have a velcro hook-side back. Buy a bunch and stick them inside your coat just like Lefty the Letter Salesman! Put 'em on your laptop sash and use them to buy, er... bitcoins?

Price: 1.0 BTC per badge. (includes worldwide shpping via USPS first-class mail)

Shipping: Worldwide shipping via USPS first-class mail is included in 1.0 BTC price.

Tax: Ha! Tax is for squares, man.

Color: Orange, with ฿ glyph in shiny silver metallic thread.

It says "sold out" at the bottom of this page because you can't buy one of these badges with dollars! Fiat currency is so two-thousand-and-late! The only way to buy a BTBBWB badge is with bitcoins, using one of the two options below:

Payment Option One: Contact Us Directly

Send an email to hello@nerdmeritbadges.com with your shipping address. If you like, you can even sign and/or encrypt your message (for additional cloak-and-dagger excellence.) Here's our public key.

We'll create a unique payment address for you. You send payment, we ship the badge, and then we'll be happy to submit a positive rating for you to the #bitcoin-otc web of trust.

Payment Option Two: Check Out With BitPay

Use this link or the button or QRcode below to check out with BitPay, which is kind of, sort of, like Shopify for Bitcoin:

One hundred Three thousand Eight hundred Four hundred Fifteen Thousand dollars for a badge!? Are you guys nuts?

When we first put these badges on sale in 2011, bitcoins were bouncing somewhere between three and six dollars per USD. Sometimes we made a little bit on each badge, sometimes we lost a little bit on each badge. But we liked the clean, integer value: one point zero bitcoins, not anything that involved fiat-currency math.

As I write this in November 2013 January 2016, Bitcoins are trading at over eight hundred four hundred dollars USD. Folks occasionally email us, assuming we have just neglected to update the site. "Fifty dollars seems steep for a badge!" they pointed out kindly at first. "Eight hundred dollars seems steep for a badge!" they pointed out kindly later.

We agree. Fifty bucks is a silly price for an embroidered badge. Eight hundred dollars is a ridiculous price for an embroidered badge. We think that is hilarious and excellent, and we love it. We understand that we will probably not sell a single badge unless the Big Bitcoin Crash comes, Bitcoins go to seventy-five cents, and we sell all the rest of our stock in an hour.

We enjoy this disconnect from mundane "reality" -- that is part of the appeal of Bitcoin to us, and we enjoy looking at our small stock of badges and going "Ha ha ha, we could BUY A CAR" with those!" Which we can't, of course. But it's fun to imagine we could.

Here's a Reddit thread discussing it, if you want to give us feedback!

TWO THOUSAND SEVENTEEN UPDATE: Bitcoins are now somewhere around FIFTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS EACH. Which is hilarious. That means that my unsold stock of embroidered badges is now "worth" enough to retire on. So there's no way I'm changing the price now!

PS: The line below says "sold out", but that's because you can't buy these badges with DOLLARS like a SUCKER. You have to buy them with BITCOINS, like a CHAMP, using one of the two options above. They are not sold out! If you have a bitcoin, you can buy a badge right now.