Hodl and the Hot Dog Stand

The summer fair smelled like sunscreen, sawdust, and something wonderful frying in oil. Hodl had been looking forward to this day for weeks.

He started with one hot dog. It was, without question, the best hot dog he had ever eaten. Perfectly charred, mustard in every crease. He ate it slowly, eyes half-closed, tail curled in pure satisfaction.

He got another.

Also excellent. Maybe slightly less transcendent than the first, but still — very good. He finished it quickly.

A third. Good. Fine. Solid hot dog.

By the fourth, he was mostly just chewing.

His sister had a suggestion

His little sister had been watching all of this with great scientific interest. She tugged his orange ear.

"Hodl. They have pizza over there. With the little pepperonis. Can we get pizza?"

"I'm full," said Hodl.

"But you just ate four hot dogs."

"Exactly."

"But pizza is different—"

"Sit down for a second," said Hodl. "I want to show you something."

His sister sat. She did not stop looking at the pizza stand.

The hot dog problem

Hodl held up one claw.

"How good was my first hot dog?"

"You made that little sound," she said. "The happy one."

"Correct. Ten out of ten. Now — how good was the fourth one?"

"You just sort of... stared at it."

"Maybe a four. Same hot dog. Same stand. Same mustard. But worth less to me than the first one. Do you know what that's called?"

She shook her head.

"So that's why you stopped?" she asked.

"Partly," said Hodl. "But there's something else."

The pizza is still there tomorrow

Hodl pointed across the fairground. The lights were coming on as the afternoon turned golden. The skee ball lanes were glowing. The ferris wheel was turning slowly against a darkening sky.

"That hot dog — once I ate it, it was gone. No trace. Nothing to show. Just a slightly fuller cat."

"But it was delicious," she said.

"The first one was. Yes. But I've maxed out my joy for things that expire in the present. A fifth hot dog won't make me happier. It'll just disappear. So I'd rather spend the rest of our coins on something that stays."

His sister thought about this for a moment.

"Like skee ball?"

"Like skee ball," said Hodl. "We'll remember this. We won't remember the fourth hot dog."

The sat that's different

They walked to the skee ball lanes. His sister rolled a ball. It bounced off the top ring and clattered somewhere behind a trash can.

"Okay but Hodl," she said, retrieving her dignity. "Does this work for sats too? Like, does your tenth sat make you less happy than your first?"

Hodl paused mid-throw. This was, in his opinion, an excellent question.

"No. And that's the interesting part."

"Why not?"

"A hot dog fills you up. The more you eat, the less room there is for the next one. But sats don't fill anything. They sit there. They don't expire. There are only ever 21 million Bitcoin in existence — which means every sat I stack is a slightly larger share of something that can never be made bigger. The more I have, the more I want the next one. Not less."

His sister threw another ball. It went directly into the 100-point hole. She screamed. The entire lane turned to look at her.

"So hot dogs have diminishing marginal utility," she said, composing herself, "but sats don't?"

"For most people who understand what they're holding? No. Because a sat today is a share of the scarcest, hardest money ever created. A dollar today is a share of something they keep printing more of. Those are very different things to own."

"That's kind of incredible," she said.

"A very smart journalist once said something like that to a very smart economist on a podcast," said Hodl. "I recommend the book he wrote afterward."

About that pizza

They played skee ball until the golden hour went full purple and the fair lights were the brightest things in the sky. His sister won a small stuffed bear. Hodl won nothing and felt fine about it.

On the way out, Hodl stopped.

"Are you still hungry?"

"...yes," she said, in the tone of someone who had been waiting a very long time to say this.

He looked toward the pizza stand. The line was short now. The little pepperoni ones were still there, glowing orange under the heat lamp.

"Low time preference doesn't mean never," said Hodl. "It means knowing when something is worth it."

He bought her the pizza.

She said it was the best thing she had ever eaten. Hodl suspected that had something to do with the skee ball, the stuffed bear, the purple sky, and the long walk across the fairground to get there.

The wait, in other words, had made the marginal utility go back up.

He filed this away as an important finding.