Butter, salted, 500g priced in Bitcoin: 2015 to 2025

Butter, salted, 500g (per 500g) cost NZ$4.30 in 2015 and NZ$8.10 in 2025, a change of +88% in New Zealand dollars across 10 years. The figures are annual averages from Stats NZ food price index, average retail price, salted butter 500g. The fiat peak in this series came in 2025 at NZ$8.10.

Priced in sats, the same item went from 1,094,148 sats to 4,615 sats, a change of −99.6%. The conversion uses the yearly average BTC price for each matching year, never a rate from a different era. The least flattering single step for the sats series was 2021 to 2022, when this item moved +75% in sats terms. Short windows can and do run against the holder; the direction across the full series is what the chart shows.

The 2025 butter shock made national news: up more than 45 percent in a year at its peak. New Zealanders were paying record prices for the product their own country produces most of.

One grocery line proves nothing on its own. Repeated across the whole basket on the main page, the pattern stops looking like noise and starts looking like a property of the unit of account.