Then why does everyone care about an empty box?
As i said, they can say "look, here's a box where we house 12 of them to make it more convenient in larger scales" while showing off their mock up single.
I presume their target audience at CES isn't the Bitcoin community so this would probably be adequate.
Actually screwing in and gluing multiple layers of singles just to have a shiny copper cube seems like a waste of time (IMHO).
It's called marketing. You don't exhibit an empty box unless you're a manufacturer of empty boxes.
Hell, they could have put in 12 packets of Walker crisps and a sticky note reading "With special greetings to our detractors".
At least it would have been funny.