Everything priced
in Bitcoin.
The dollar chart hides the unit problem. Enter a salary, a house down payment, or a monthly basket, and see what the same purchasing powerpurchasing powerWhat a dollar can actually buy, not what the dollar number says. A 1971 dollar bought a gallon of gas. Today's dollar buys roughly a third of one. Same dollar, much less buying ability.Full definition cost in Bitcoin over time. Prices come from real data, not made-up history verify×DON'T TRUST, VERIFYClaim: BTC/USD from CoinMetrics daily data; the same purchasing power is CPI-adjusted into each year's dollars using the BLS annual CPI-U series.Verify at: CoinMetrics ↗ · BLS CPI ↗Annual BTC price = arithmetic mean of that year's daily closes. No grocery/house/salary datasets are invented..
Log is the default: the BTCBitcoin (BTC)The ticker symbol for Bitcoin, used on exchanges and in price quotes.Full definition needed spans four orders of magnitude, so a linear axis flattens everything after 2013.
Annual BTC price = arithmetic mean of that year's daily closes (CoinMetrics), stamped at every build from the site's snapshot. "Today" uses the latest close, $60066 on 2026-07-01. Your numbers stay in your browser.
Year by year
| YEAR | SAME PURCHASING POWER ($) | AVG BTC PRICE | BTC NEEDED | SATS NEEDED |
|---|
The long arc is the story: the same real income cost hundreds of BTC a decade ago and a couple today. The year-to-year wobble is not noise you should ignore, it is Bitcoin's volatility. When BTC falls, the sats needed rises. This shows history, not a forecast.
What this tool assumes
- It does not use invented historical prices for salaries, houses, or groceries. You enter a current dollar amount; the tool holds that purchasing power constant and expresses it in each past year's dollars using the BLS annual CPIConsumer Price Index (CPI)The government's measure of how much a typical basket of consumer goods costs over time.Full definition-U index (data/cpi.json), then divides by that year's average BTC price.
- Annual BTC price is the arithmetic mean of every daily close in that calendar year (CoinMetrics, data/btc.json), stamped at every build. Only complete years are charted; 2010 is a partial year measured from Bitcoin's first data on 2010-07-18.
- The "today" point uses the latest daily close ($60066 on 2026-07-01), not a live quote, so it matches the rest of the site's snapshot.
- CPI understates many real costs (rent, insurance, tuition). If anything, this tool is conservative about how much purchasing power the dollar has lost. See the problem.
- Past Bitcoin prices are history. Nothing here predicts future prices, and Bitcoin has fallen more than 80% four separate times.
Methodology and questions
How is this calculated?
For a current amount A and a year Y: the same purchasing power in Y's dollars is A × CPI[Y] / CPI[now]. The Bitcoin needed is that figure divided by Y's average BTC price; sats are BTC × 100,000,000. Every input is a public number: your amount, the BLS annual CPI series, and CoinMetrics BTC/USD. Full sources are in the verify page.
Why does the Bitcoin line wobble instead of always falling?
Because it tracks two forces at once: the dollar losing purchasing power (a slow, steady drift) and Bitcoin's price (violently volatile). Over a decade the second force dominates and the sats needed collapses; year to year it rises whenever BTC falls. Both are true, and the tool shows both honestly.
Does this use real historical grocery or house prices?
No, and that is deliberate. It holds the purchasing power you enter constant and re-prices it, rather than pretending to know what a specific house cost in 2013. That keeps the math honest and the answer about the unit of account, which is the point.
Is this investment advice?
No. It is a historical unit-conversion tool. It shows what the past looked like priced in Bitcoin; it says nothing about what to buy. See disclosures.
Not financial advice. Historical data only. Your numbers stay in your browser.