Now you can have your sandwich and spend it too.
Despite the sandwich’s limited edition status (at least in the United States), the image of McDonald’s McRib will live on as an NFT.
The McRib consists of a boneless pork patty shaped into a short rack of ribs, slathered in BBQ sauce, and served on a sesame seed bun with onions and pickles. It’s a divisive sandwich, as some people were turned off by the lack of ribs in a “rib” sandwich. Nonetheless, the McRib has maintained cult status since its introduction in 1981, reappearing on McD’s menu every few years.
In its place, the fast-food behemoth has launched a sweepstakes for a chance to win an NFT, or non-fungible token, containing a timeless keepsake of the fan-favorite sandwich.
“Our McRib NFTs are digital versions of the fan favorite sandwich – almost as saucy as the McRib itself – and we’re giving them away to a few lucky fans on Twitter beginning
1 November,” McDonald’s said in a statement.
They’re the latest to jump on the NFT bandwagon, which has seen bidders throw tens of millions of dollars in cryptocurrency at digitised images and artwork made exclusively available to the buyer in a blockchain — a sort of internet-based lockbox. Its non-fungibility implies that the ephemera cannot be replicated or exchanged without the highly secure access key, which is only available to the owner. Although the content contained in the NFT can be shared in the form of secondary copies, the original can only be owned by one person.
“I present to u the most important NFT,” the company tweeted Monday.
Follow @McDonalds on Twitter and retweet their November 1 announcement by November 7, which will automatically enter them into the sweepstakes.
Only ten people from the United States will be chosen at random, and they must all bring a crypto wallet in order to distribute the McRib NFT, according to the rules.
Of course, as some have mocked the news, the crypto market value of the brand-based NFT has yet to be determined. One critic responded, “Silence, brand.”
