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Pizza Day holds a special place in the history of bitcoin by marking the first recorded instance of bitcoin being used as a medium of exchange, or money. On this day in 2010, two people – Laszlo Hanyecz and Jeremy Sturdivant – agreed to exchange two Papa John’s pizzas for 10,000 BTC. Today, bitcoin miners, investors, and developers around the world celebrate this event with pizzas of their own . On May 22, 2010 when one bitcoin was practically worthless, Laszlo Hanyecz bought two pizzas for 10,000 bitcoins, which were worth about $30.
“It wasn’t like Bitcoins had any value back then, so the idea of trading them for a pizza was incredibly cool,” Hanyecz told the NY Times. Pushing the industry forward with a full-stack mining solution from mining firmware up to the pool. Laszlo Hanyecz is more than just “that guy” who bought Pizzas with 10,000 BTC that the internet loves to sensationalize. In honor of Bitcoin Pizza Day, let’s look into his groundbreaking contributions beyond the pizza purchase.
Real-time last sale data for U.S. stock quotes reflect trades reported through Nasdaq only. Intraday data delayed at least 15 minutes or per exchange requirements. Ultimately, Bitcoin Pizza day is being used by some crypto bulls as a time to reflect on how far blockchain-based assets have come and how far they might still have to go to achieve further legitimacy.
Now, let’s put this into perspective a bit and fast forward about seven years. At that point, the https://cryptolisting.org/ transaction was worth 600,000,000 USD. Those assets aren’t usually correlated but moves in speculative assets like crypto may sometimes mirror investors’ appetite for risk. Lately, investors have been pointing out the correlation between moves in bitcoin and traditional markets.
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Hanyecz reused the address he sent the original 10,000 BTC from many times. At the time of writing, his address sent and received a total of more than 3,300 transactions. After transferring the 10,000 BTC he received, the address was only used by Sturdivant or someone else four other times—once in 2015, 2017, 2018, and 2020.
A British man took up Hanyecz’s offer and bought the two pizzas for him in exchange for the 10,000 Bitcoins. Even then the recipient of the Bitcoins got himself a bargain, paying $25 for the pizzas, while 10,000 Bitcoins were worth around $41 at the time. While it’s not really possible to get an accurate measure of how much Bitcoin was worth at the time, estimates say that BTC was worth less than $0.01 each at the time of the Bitcoin for pizza transaction. There wasn’t a liquid market for Bitcoin at the time, so BTC didn’t really have an established price. Based on Bitcoin’s market cap as of May 16, 2022, Hanyecz’s pizza cost him over $300 million. But at peak of Bitcoin’s market value in November of 2021 as per CoinDesk data, he forked over $670 millon on his pizza treat.
What Is Bitcoin Pizza Day?
The purchase equated to roughly $41 dollars back in 2010, based on the going rate for bitcoin back then, and is widely viewed as the first time a virtual currency had been used to buy anything in the real world. The reason why the global Bitcoin community celebrates this event is mainly about Bitcoin as a technological revolution and invention of sound money. The year 2010 was about 24 months after the global financial crisis. People had begun to question the current economic models, economic policies, and money as a store of value. Bitcoin Pizza Day marks the day on which an early Bitcoin enthusiast purchased pizza using Bitcoin on May 22nd, 2010. The guy who bought pizza with Bitcoin was a programmer and early miner named Laszlo Hanyecz.
Hanyecz got two Papa John’s pizza boxes on that fateful day in exchange for 10,000 bitcoin, and the transaction came to be known as the world’s first commercial purchase made using cryptocurrency. That remarkable achievement is now celebrated every May 22 as “Bitcoin Pizza Day.” But Hanyecz was not the only one to seemingly squander the fortune. On the other end of the infamous pizza deal was Jeremy Sturdivant, a product development engineer who spent those Bitcoins for traveling. Bitcoin Pizza Day is observed across the world on May 22. The day commemorates the first time cryptocurrency was used to buy products in the real world. Coincidentally, the first item that was bought with cryptocurrency was pizza!
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Pepperoni, Italian sausage, ham, and bacon, with house made red sauce and topped with a blend of freshly grated cheese. Canadian bacon, pineapple, and jalapenos, on top of a house made red sauce topped with a blend of freshly grated cheese. Had either one of them held on to the crypto, they would have become very rich.
He offered 10,000 BTC to anyone who would be willing to order, collect and bring them to him. Someone pointed out that he could get $41 for those bitcoins on a certain exchange website, which priced BTC at less than half a cent per coin. The trimming of centralized authorities in-between payments not only allows for greater transactional privacy but allow for greater freedom in money transmission. While in stable countries like the U.S. seeing transactions being censored is more of an edge case, a considerable part of the world’s population lives under more authoritarian regimes and don’t share the same luck. As a result, the simplest of the transactions risk being declined – and can even incur in personal damage to the transacting parties. While the amount of bitcoin paid for those two simple pizzas may seem mind-blowing today, times were different then.
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“I think that it’s great that I got to be part of the early history of bitcoin in that way,” he told Coin Telegraph in 2018. Hanyecz, now 39, went on to spend 100,000 bitcoin — currently $3.8 billion — on pizzas alone in the summer of 2010. On May 18, Hanyecz announced on a forum called Bitcointalk.org that he was looking to buy pizza – preferably two large ones – using bitcoin.
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- In May 2010, Jeremy Sturdivant, then a 19-year-old student, saw a weird request on a crypto online forum posted by Laszlo Hanyecz.
- Hanyecz bought more pizzas until he began to run out of bitcoins, and after the price started to climb, Sturdivant sold his 10,000 bitcoins for approximately $400.
- He doesn’t appear to have a verifiable social media account which makes it almost impossible to check on his current whereabouts or on what he’s been up to over the last several years.
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Sturdivant himself doesn’t appear on the forum chat, but he told Bitcoin Who’s Who that the conversation with Hanyecz happened on Internet Relay Chat . He added that the bitcoin he received in exchange for the delivery of two pizzas was later used to finance his U.S. travel plans. Bitcoin Pizza Day marks the day when the first known purchase of a physical good occurred using the first cryptocurrency, bitcoin . Obviously, the value of these same bitcoins increased significantly during the subsequent decade.
The halving reduces the rate at which new bitcoin is created, specifically reducing block rewards, and in effect, reducing the incentive for miners to continue their work of securing the network. N.F.Ts are not cryptocurrencies, despite being considered digital assets. The cryptocurrency is released and is based on the bitcoin code and algorithm.
The holiday is a significant cultural origin story in the history of Bitcoin, and represents a real-world, commercial use of the cryptocurrency. It is a decentralized digital currency that doesn’t rely on a single administrator or central bank. Bitcoin can be sent directly from one user to another user on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network without the need for intermediaries. Since May 22, 2010, the Bitcoin community has grown and developments have been made that allow you to buy a pizza using Bitcoin on the lightning network today, with transaction costs reduced to cents on the dollar. Thousands of merchants now accept Bitcoin payments for pizza and other products, and infrastructure has advanced to the point where you no longer need to post a bitcoin offer on BitcoinTalk.org to purchase a product. Today, the Bitcoin community worldwide commemorates May 22 as the first recorded day that Bitcoin was used to purchase a physical good.
It has already been a rollercoaster ride, and we’re sure to see more volatility as the industry continues to head deeper into uncharted waters. Whatever else we might say, the story of the world’s first decentralized digital currency is far from over. About 11 years ago on May 22, Laszlo Hanyecz, one of the early adopters of the newfangled cryptocurrency that had just been coded into existence, purchased a pair of Papa Johns pizza pies using 10,000 bitcoins. Compared to its all-time-high, those 10,000 Bitcoin would be valued at $690,000,000! Despite this, Hanyecz has no regrets about using his cryptocurrency to buy pizza.
The Evolution Of Bitcoin Pizza Day Celebrations
She has written pieces for IMNOTABARISTA, Tourmeric and Vocal in the past, including one of her favourite pieces on remaining positive and strong through trying times, which can be found at the link above. Outside of her working life, Katie loves growing plants, cooking, and practicing yoga. In what is wownero the year or so following Bitcoin’s launch, it didn’t really have a solid value, as it had never actually been used to buy anything. Without some real-world comparison, Bitcoin’s value was generally negotiated among sellers within the Bitcoin forum, which the mysterious Nakamoto also launched.
Meanwhile, more than 15,000 establishments worldwide already accept cryptocurrency as payment. PizzaDAO, the decentralized blockchain project that aims to link pizza lovers around the world with the technological possibilities of Web3, is celebrating Bitcoin Pizza Day on Sunday in traditional fashion. Because of the price of bitcoin, Hanyecz’s story became global in the United States, with The Wall Street Journal, ABC News, Slate, and TechCrunch joining TechCrunch and Slate in popularizing the transaction. Since their creation, cryptocurrencies have dominated the global virtual currency landscape, and now everyone is mining this coin or seeking to invest in crypto. Intraday Data provided by FACTSET and subject to terms of use. Historical and current end-of-day data provided by FACTSET.
They later recovered 200k of the lost bitcoins — perhaps accounting for some of the disparities in reporting. On May 22, 2010, now known as Bitcoin Pizza Day, Laszlo Hanyecz agreed to pay 10,000 Bitcoins for two delivered Papa John’s pizzas. Organized on bitcointalk forum, the Florida man reached out for help. “I’ll pay 10,000 bitcoins for a couple of pizzas.. like maybe 2 large ones so I have some left over for the next day,” Hanyecz wrote. From this day onwards, real-world goods could be purchased with cryptocurrency.
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 at just over $8,200, making the pizzas worth … That amount was agreed upon by Sturdivant and Hanyecz, but the total spend was 10,001 BTC after accounting for the 1 BTC transaction fee that Hanyecz paid to the network’s miners.