Michelle Zauner has been performing as Japanese Breakfast for a few years now, with her first tour under the name coming in 2015. Now she has shared a fascinating story from that trek involving a now-profitable Bitcoin transaction.
In a series of tweets, Zauner revealed that at one tour stop in Austin, Texas (which appears to have been during the South By Southwest festival), somebody bought a T-shirt from her for $10-worth of Bitcoin, which is worth much more now than it was then. She wrote, “So I just found this old tour sheet from my first tour as JB in 2015 where we profited (tho not really because I don’t think I took out the cost to make merch) $800 for a month’s worth of touring. Then I noticed at our Austin house show some dude gave me the equivalent of $10 in Bitcoin in exchange for a shirt. I remember him telling me it’d be worth a lot someday and being like ya ya whatev you are prob just trying to get a free shirt but I’ll roll the dice. Frantically I just spent the past half hour trying to recover my blockchain id and just discovered that $10 Bitcoin equivalent is now almost $800 five years later.”
Zauner’s math checks out: $10 worth of Bitcoin on March 13, 2015 (the day of the show) would have been equivalent to about 0.042 coins at the time, which today is worth $813.24. It’s not clear if Zauner has managed to regain access to her Bitcoin wallet, but if she has, the profits from the tour will be doubled. One of the tweets also shows most of a spreadsheet detailing Zauner’s income and expenses from the tour, which in itself is an interesting look at the money involved in the tour of a new artist.
Check out the tweets below.
So I just found this old tour sheet from my first tour as JB in 2015 where we profited (tho not really because I don’t think I took out the cost to make merch) $800 for a month’s worth of touring pic.twitter.com/DdUVaREXUZ
— Japanese Breakfast (@Jbrekkie) November 30, 2020
Then I noticed at our Austin house show some dude gave me the equivalent of $10 in Bitcoin in exchange for a shirt. I remember him telling me it’d be worth a lot someday and being like ya ya whatev you are prob just trying to get a free shirt but I’ll roll the dice pic.twitter.com/hdt6BsewSp
— Japanese Breakfast (@Jbrekkie) November 30, 2020
Frantically I just spent the past half hour trying to recover my blockchain id and just discovered that $10 Bitcoin equivalent is now almost $800 five years later 🤯
— Japanese Breakfast (@Jbrekkie) November 30, 2020