Remember all your friends and coworkers who tried to get you to buy into bitcoin about a year ago, and when you heard the term “blockchain” at least once an hour? Well, Hublot does, and they’ve released the Hublot Big Bang Meca-10 P2P watch for the all savvy and successful bitcoin investors of the world. The Hublot Meca-10 P2P is a limited edition, fully bitcoin-themed Big Bang Meca-10 which you can naturally purchase via bitcoin.
Hublot has taken the Big Bang Meca-10 which we saw hands-on and discussed further here, and fully decked it out in bitcoin styling and references. The Meca-10 P2P is limited to 210 pieces, a nod to the overall cap of bitcoin in existence, set at 21 million units. The name, Meca-10 P2P, is in reference to “Peer to Peer,” the type of payment that bitcoin enables.
Stylistically, the watch has a futuristic vibe. Prominently featured on the dial around the 3 o’clock position is a bitcoin logo, and on the sapphire caseback a map of the world is shown with rays of light connecting dots, I guess meant to evoke digital interconnectedness. The blue leather strap has a circuit-board style design, and engraved onto the edge of the bezel is the individual bitcoin transaction number for your watch. Prominently featured is the 10 o’clock marker, the only hour marker with an Arabic numeral, another nod to the 10-year anniversary of bitcoin, which was originally launched in November of 2008.
From a technical perspective, the Meca-10 P2P clocks in at a diameter of 45mm and 15.95mm thick, with a case made of black ceramic. Beating along inside is the HUB1201 in-house movement, clearly visible through the skeletonized dial, featuring 24 jewels, a frequency of 21,600bph, and a 10-hour power reserve (conveniently also seeming to reference the anniversary). The cyber-space-themed strap is made from blue dyed calf leather and rubber, and has a black PVD coated buckle with a ceramic insert. Overall, the technical specs here are what we’re used to seeing with Hublot, especially given their trend towards experimenting heavily with ceramics.
The most notable part of this release, in my opinion, is the purchasing method. With its theme, it makes sense that Hublot would make the only payment method for the Meca-10 P2P bitcoin. I would imagine that the target buyer here is the successful bitcoin investor, so that technical hurdle of paying via bitcoin wouldn’t be an issue. Also the fact that you’d have to be pretty into bitcoin to go out and buy a bitcoin-themed Hublot. And if you happened to make a bundle on it… why not? While this watch is kinda gimmicky, I have to admit, I dig it. Like many, I got sucked into the bitcoin/cryptocurrency craze and geeked out over it pretty hard, and reading through all the nods to the bitcoin/crypto world that Hublot incorporated into the Meca-10 P2P, does make me smile.
And surprisingly, the design that Hublot went for works really well with the Big Bang Meca-10 design, in my opinion. I’ve never been the biggest Hublot nut, but something about the shade of blue, the skeletonized dial, the black case… all of it comes together to work in my eyes. Unfortunately, I was not a successful cryptocurrency investor, so the Meca-10 P2P does lie well outside my grasp. But, I do find Hublot’s tactic interesting here, and I’ll be curious to see if the rest of the luxury watch market begins adopting bitcoin and cryptocurrency as means of payment moving forward.
With the release of the Big Bang Meca-10 P2P, Hublot once again shows that they are more daring and experimental than the vast majority of the watch industry that is notoriously, and by definition, slow to adopt new technology. Whether Hublot’s lead will have an impact on the industry, and whether cryptocurrency will change money as we know it, is yet to be seen. If you’re a savvy bitcoin investor with a few to spare, the Hublot Big Bang Meca-10 P2P can be purchased for the equivalent of $25,000, which at time of writing is about 7.4 bitcoin. Since Hublot has tied its bitcoin price to US dollars, buying the Hublot Big Bang Meca-10 P2P will be cashing out of $25,000 worth of bitcoin – so, it’s ironically kind of a bet against bitcoin’s future value. Learn more at hublot.com