Chipotle says it will give out free burritos and $100,000 in bitcoin for National Burrito Day
- Chipotle says it plans to give out 10,000 free burritos and $100,000 in bitcoin on Thursday.
- To win a prize, players get 10 tries to guess a six-digit code on Chipotle's website.
- Prizes range from free burritos to $25,000 in bitcoin.
Chipotle is giving out free burritos and $100,000 in bitcoin as a part of a "Burritos or Bitcoin" game on Thursday, it said.
The event will launch Thursday morning and run for 12 hours as a part of National Burrito Day, which takes place every year on the first Thursday in April. While the event will take place on April 1, the event is not part of an April Fools' Day prank, Chipotle told Insider.
The chain will be the first US restaurant to give away bitcoin, according to Chipotle's press release.
No purchase is required to be eligible for the contest, which will be hosted on burritosorbitcoin.com. To qualify for a prize, the player must correctly guess a six-digit code.
The game will give out burritos to 10,000 winners and as many as 53 people could win a bitcoin prize, the chain said. The bitcoin prizes are distributed across two values: 50 people can win $500 in bitcoin, and three can win $25,000 worth of the digital currency.
Based on Chipotle's calculations, higher-value items, including the $25,000 bitcoin prize, have increasingly lower odds of being won.
In its press release, Chipotle said it was giving each player 10 chances to guess the correct code in an ode to bitcoin investors like Stefan Thomas, who lost $220 million in bitcoin after failing to guess the correct password for his account.
At the time, Thomas was given 10 guesses. In the press release, Chipotle said it partnered with Thomas, who is the CEO of Coil, a blockchain company.
Thomas confirmed the partnership with Chipotle on Twitter.
"I am a @ChipotleTweets influencer now," Thomas tweeted.
Bitcoin prices have surged in the past year, hitting a record $60,000 earlier in March. At the time of publication, a single bitcoin was worth over $59,000.
Chipotle is not the first company to experiment with bitcoin. Last week, Tesla began accepting bitcoin in exchange for its cars.