Chipotle Is Giving Out Free Burritos For National Burrito Day. Here's How To Get One
Until 6 p.m. PT on April 1, 2021 — the 90th anniversary of National Burrito Day — you can enter to win free prizes in Chipotle's game, "Burritos or Bitcoin."
For your chance to win, visit the "Burritos or Bitcoin" website. Then, as the rules explain, you will be prompted to enter a six-digit numeric password (a string of six numbers between 1 and 9). If you enter the wrong password, a message will prompt you to make another attempt. In all, you have ten tries to guess the password and become eligible for the giveaway.
Prizes, as the game's name suggests, come in the form of burritos or Bitcoin. While 10,000 winners will receive a free burrito from Chipotle, 50 fans will win $500 in Bitcoin. Only three lucky customers will win $25,000. As the press release for the event notes, this sweepstakes marks the first time a branded restaurant has offered cryptocurrency to its consumers.
Chipotle's promotion was inspired by recent events
For those wondering where the connection between a burrito chain and a cryptocurrency lies, the press release explains that the promotion was co-created with Stefan Thomas, founder and CEO of Coil, who lost the password to his crypto-wallet.
In a piece published in January 2021, The New York Times reported that Thomas had lost the paper upon which he wrote the password to his IronKey, a security program that allows 10 guesses before encrypting its contents forever. Within IronKey were the keys to Thomas' digital wallet that contained the 7,002 Bitcoin he bought years ago which, at the time of the piece's publication, was worth $220 million.
Forgetting one's password is not an unheard of occurrence in the cryptocurrency market, especially because the security that undergirds these digital currencies means that only the owner has access to the money, unlike with money one stores in the bank. Fortunately for Thomas, he still had access to other smaller amounts of his Bitcoin, but he failed to retrieve the fortune stored. Reflecting on the lessons of this loss, Thomas expounded to The New York Times, "This whole idea of being your own bank — let me put it this way: Do you make your own shoes? The reason we have banks is that we don't want to deal with all those things that banks do."
In the case of Chipotle, at least, one does not have any cryptocurrencies to lose, only burritos to win.