In 2005 a British student named Alex Tew sold a million pixels on a webpage for $1 each to pay for university.In 2005 a British student named Alex Tew sold a million pixels on a webpage for $1 each to pay for university.
Anyone with a minimum of 100 quid bought a bunch of pixels, put their logo in it, and the thing went viral. He made $1,000,000 and the site still exists today.
I learned about the site in 2013 or so during college, and it flipped a switch in my head that probably started my persuit of entrepreneurship. I bought my first sats when the price of Bitcoin was at $7,000. I knew then that it was going to be a big deal, and I realised I could make a Bitcoin version of Alex Tew's homepage, but I was still studying and making a website was a feat that was out of reach for me. Fast forward almost a decade, and the idea I came up with had been sitting in a Figma file for 3 years, sloppily mocked up after a drunken Friday night when the idea came to me again. (I get my best ideas when I'm drunk).
The terrible design I attempted in Figma years ago
I tried to build it about a year ago using a Claude chat and it looked like a 2003 GeoCities page. Came back recently with Claude Code and actually pulled it off to a standard I deemed acceptable.
1 million pixel grid, each 10x10 cell costs 1000 sats, hence 1 Billion Sats, because the whole grid is worth 10 Bitcoin all up.
The attempt at a vibe-coded site in late 2024... god it was bad
I believe in Bitcoin as a solution to the money problem. I want to help accelerate adoption of the masses. A lot of people's first crypto transaction is on an exchange buying a fraction of something and watching a number go up or down. This is something different, a low stakes, creative reason to actually send sats somewhere. Put your project on a grid that's meant to fill up over time, and drive traffic to your site. To me, it feels more like participation than speculation. The grid is sparse right now, which is what the Million Dollar Homepage looked like in week one before anyone had heard of it. If you're reading this on Stacker News you're probably earlier to most things than most people anyay.
The site is live at 1billionsats.com
Take a look, and thanks for reading!
Would you put anything on it?
There is nothing new under the sun. ;)
Your site recreates LightningK0ala’s https://satoshis.place that was very popular in 2018.
He published the source code here in 2019: https://github.com/LightningK0ala/satoshis.place
His site sold each pixel for 1 sat, though.
I might consider putting something on it. Not sure what though... Will have to think about it.
Sure! Anything at all, even your usual cats project? Big fan of Blues & Jazz myself so enjoyed listening to those!
Too expensive. Especially for something that hasn't taken off yet. You could maybe introduce dynamic pricing depending on activity (cheaper when no one is buying).
Can't pay via lightning :(
Lightning payments are coming very soon!
Hey @sime, lightning payments are now Live!
Good grief, I made a mistake! It's 100,000 sats per cell, not 1000...
Bit pricey no?
I just figured 'Billion Satoshi Homepage' had more of a ring to it, don't you reckon?
And as the price currently stands, it works out cheaper than Alex Tew's homepage pricing.