By Kevin Finnerty
Medium | July 2025
Picture it: You walk into Satriale’s Pork Store. Smells like cured meat, broken dreams, and maybe a little bit of last night’s cigar smoke. You’re craving gabagool — capicola for the uninitiated. Thin slices of salty, spicy, piggy perfection. You point to the deli counter.
“Gimme a quarter kilo of the good stuff.”
“That’ll be $23.50,” the butcher says.
You nod. You know it’s worth it. But then the guy behind you says, “I’ll pay in Bitcoin.”
And just like that, the deli becomes Wall Street.
Welcome to 2025: Where Gabagool Is Cheaper Than Satoshi Dust
Let’s be honest: the world’s gone mad. Back in 2010, if you bought a slice of gabagool and a cannoli, you wouldn’t think twice. But in 2025, while you’re eyeing your antipasto platter, someone’s calculating if it’s cheaper to buy it in Ethereum gas fees or just eat a PDF of a sandwich.
As of today, 1 BTC = $122,000 AUD.
That’s right. Enough to buy a used Mercedes or Tony’s loyalty (well, for a month anyway). Meanwhile, 250 grams of gabagool? Let’s say around $23.50 at a good Italian deli in Sydney’s Inner West or Melbourne’s Lygon Street.
So you could either:
- Buy 5,191 gabagool servings, or
- Own one Bitcoin, which comes with the stress of watching it drop faster than Christopher’s dignity at an intervention.
What Would Tony Soprano Say?
“You telling me I gotta sell a thousand rolls of mortadella just to get one freakin’ Bitcoin?”
Exactly, Tony. Back in the day, money was meat. You respected it. You sliced it thin and served it with respect. Now it’s just numbers on a screen — like Paulie Walnuts trying to work a Ledger wallet.
And forget trying to explain crypto to Silvio. You ever seen a man in a velvet suit have a breakdown over a seed phrase? Not pretty.
Crypto is the New Waste Management
Once upon a time, “going digital” meant you were being bugged by the Feds. Now it’s all about NFTs, DeFi, and coins named after dog memes. Tony would’ve thought “staking” was something you did to someone who ratted to the Feds.
Here’s the thing — Gabagool is real. It exists. It’s delicious. It doesn’t disappear when Elon tweets or when the Fed raises rates. Bitcoin? Try frying that in olive oil with garlic and peppers.
Bitcoin may be scarce, but you know what’s really scarce?
A nonna-approved slice of gabagool served in a white ceramic dish while Frank Sinatra plays in the background.
Let’s Do the Maths: Gabagool vs BTC
ItemCost (AUD)What You Get250g Gabagool$23.50Salty, porky joy1 Bitcoin$122,000Emotional instability and bad tattoosGabagool per BTC~5,191 servingsA year’s supply (if you don’t share)BTC per Gabagool~0.000192 BTCWhich your wallet calls “dust”
Note: Market volatility may affect your antipasto.
Kevin’s Final Thoughts
Look, I’m not saying gabagool is better than Bitcoin… actually, no, I am saying that. One feeds your stomach, the other feeds your ego. One’s been around since Roman times. The other was invented by an anonymous ghost with a math fetish.
So next time you’re thinking of investing in crypto, ask yourself:
Would Tony Soprano rather have Bitcoin… or a sandwich?
You know the answer.
Kevin Finnerty is a writer, occasional gabagool connoisseur, and part-time financial philosopher. If you’re still reading, you probably owe him a sandwich.
Gabagool vs. Bitcoin: Why Tony Would’ve Flipped a Table by Now was originally published in The Capital on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.