Today marks a new anniversary for the first Bitcoin transaction, the one in which Laszlo Hanyecz paid for two pizzas with BTC 10,000. Every May 22, the global crypto ecosystem remembers this event as the Bitcoin Pizza Day, an event that beyond the anecdote of the sale, marks a milestone, a before and after in the history of adoption of the main cryptocurrency.
That night in 2010, Laszlo Hanyecz, a programmer from Jacksonville, Florida, posted on the Bitcoin Talk forum, the main meeting place for bitcoiners at the time, a message asking for two pizzas. In return, he promised to pay for food and shipping with BTC 10,000. This was the message:
I will pay 10,000 bitcoins for a couple of pizzas ... Maybe 2 big ones, so I have some portions left for the next day. I like to leave pizza to snack on later. You can make the pizza yourself and bring it to my house or order it at a pizzeria, but what I'm looking for is that they give me food in exchange for bitcoins, that I have to order or prepare them myself, something like ordering a 'breakfast' in a hotel or something, and they bring you something to eat and you're happy.
In 2010, BTC 10,000 was equivalent to about USD 41, a somewhat high price for two pizzas, which cost USD 25 at the famous Papa John's pizza chain. Anyway, Hanyecz only wanted to do the food exchange for bitcoins and fixed the sum in a round number: 10,000 bitcoins.
Another user of the forum, a Briton known as "Jercos", accepted Hanyecz's offer. To complete the transaction, Hanyecz sent Jercos the bitcoins, who then ordered the pizzas, paid for them with fiat money, and shipped them. Thus, the first purchase and sale of a product or service by BTC and the transaction to send the cryptocurrency created by Satoshi Nakamoto became a reality.
Years later, Hanyecz stated that his main objective was not so much to buy a pizza but to prove that goods and services could be exchanged for BTC, as with traditional fiat money, and to help the adoption of the cryptocurrency, adding that:
Pizza Day is a day to reflect on how far we've come, how digital assets have moved from niche to mainstream, and celebrate the community's work to get that far. But it is also a reminder that the world of cryptocurrencies continues to move at a slow pace and that our most exciting and meaningful work may be ahead.
Since Bitcoin's inception, "Hanyeczs pizzas" have become increasingly expensive. Nine months after the purchase, Bitcoin reached parity with the U.S. dollar, making the two pizzas worth $ 10,000, and in 2015, the fifth anniversary of Bitcoin Pizza Day, the two pizzas were valued at $ 2.4 million. Today, Bitcoin is trading at just over $ 9000, so the famous pizzas would be costing $ 90 million today.
Despite the astronomical rise in his pizzas, and at the price of Bitcoin, Hanyecz doesn't seem to be sorry. And in another NYTimes interview, he stated:
The idea of exchanging bitcoin for pizza was incredibly cool.
What could you buy in May 2020 with approximately BTC 10,000?
- 12 million Papa John´s pizzas
- 81.818 iPhone 11
- 10 luxury mansions in Beverly Hills
- 9 golden Bugattis Veyron, the most expensive car in the world (USD 10,000,000 each)
- The world's most expensive diamond necklace (valued at $ 55 million)
