Pizza for Bitcoins ? – Today is a great day in the history of Bitcoin (BTC), as we celebrate 13 years of Bitcoin Pizza Day! This memorable event took place on 22 May 2010 and marked the 1st transaction of Bitcoins in history for a physical good: 10,000 BTC for… 2 pizzas.
Bitcoin Pizza Day on 22 May
Pizza for bitcoins ? – Today is a great day in the history of Bitcoin (BTC), as we celebrate 13 years of Bitcoin Pizza Day!
A memorable event that took place on 22 May 2010 and marked the 1st transaction of Bitcoins in history for a physical good: 10,000 BTC for… 2 pizzas.
A look back at the history of this historic transaction
It all began on 18 May 2010 when a developer known as Laszlo Hanyecz posted on the famous Bitcointalk forum that he was willing to pay 10,000 Bitcoins for someone to order two pizzas from him:
“I’m willing to pay 10,000 Bitcoins for two pizzas.
“I’ll pay 10,000 Bitcoins for a couple of pizzas… maybe two large pizzas, so I have some left over for the next day. I like to have leftover pizza to munch on later. You can make the pizza yourself and bring it to my house or order it for me from a restaurant, but my goal is to have food delivered to me in exchange for bitcoins […] If you’re interested, let me know and we can work something out. “
While such a huge amount of BTC is purely colossal today, the context of the time was quite different. At the time, Bitcoin was trading at around $0.003 and $0.004. The value of these 10,000 BTC was therefore around $40, which is close to the price of 2 large pizzas.
It is now 3 days since Laszlo published his offer and no one has yet responded positively. To update his post, on 21 May 2020 he posted a new message, which might seem ridiculous today:
“So no one wants to buy me a pizza? is the amount of bitcoin I’m offering too low? “
The next day, 22 May 2010, he finally posted a message thanking a British user called Jeremy “jercos” Sturdivant. In it, he thanked him for responding to his request and ordering two pizzas for him from Papa John’s restaurant in Jacksonville, Florida, Laszlo Hanyecz’s home town.
A piece of Bitcoin history had just been written. Here are the famous pizzas in question:
The most expensive pizzas in the world
“I just want to tell you that I managed to exchange 10,000 bitcoins for pizzas. Thanks jercos!”
The birth of a meme
This episode quickly became historic, particularly as just 3 months later, on 4 August 2010, the value of these 10,000 BTCs climbed to $600.
The post thus became a real meme for the Bitcoin community. People regularly replied ironically to the original post, asking Laszlo if his offer was still valid, even though the value of the 10,000 BTC was sky-high at the time:
Since that day, Papa John’s, the place that made these pizzas, has had a commemorative plaque on its facade celebrating the event (here in the hands of its creator):
Famous around the world for his purchase, Laszlo Hanyecz has been interviewed many times by American television, where he tells his incredible story.
In 2019, Laszlo was interviewed by CNN’s Anderson Cooper, who is making a series of documentaries on the cryptocurrency industry. He asked him how he managed to sleep knowing that he could have become a multi-millionaire by keeping those 10,000 BTC, to which Laszlo replied:
“I think thinking like that is not really good for me. “
At the time of writing, that much BTC is worth almost $270 million. However, you have to imagine that at the time, no one could have anticipated that Bitcoin would be trading for several thousand dollars.
Although he is known as the Bitcoin Pizza Guy, Laszlo Hanyecz has also contributed a great deal to the development of Bitcoin. He is also the man behind GPU mining and the first implementation of Bitcoin Core for macOS.
Whatever the case, this day will remain forever engraved in the history of Bitcoin and in the minds of the community. Bitcoin Pizza Day is undoubtedly one of the most celebrated Bitcoin-related events in the world.
This 13th anniversary of Bitcoin Pizza Day is therefore an opportunity for the entire crypto-community to enjoy a pizza in tribute to Laszlo Hanyecz.
To put this story into perspective, at a BTC of $27,000, these 2 pizzas would cost you the modest sum of… 0.001489 BTC. On the other hand, 10,000 BTC can now be exchanged for no less than… 13,450,800 pizzas
