Bitcoin Pizza Day
May 22nd is celebrated in Bitcoin circles as Bitcoin Pizza Day.
It commemorates one of the first real-world transactions using Bitcoin as currency.
Which at the time was just over a year old and virtually worthless outside of the small group of crypto enthusiasts who were mining and trading it.
On May 22, 2010, a programmer named Laszlo Hanyecz posted on the Bitcoin Talk forum that he was willing to pay 10,000 bitcoins for a couple of pizzas.
At the exchange rate at that time, that meant the two pizzas were valued at around $41.
Hanyecz didn’t want to go through the laborious process of converting his bitcoins to dollars and ordering a delivery.
So he asked if anyone would be willing to order the pizzas for him and he would reimburse them with bitcoins.
A 19-year-old named Jeremy Sturdivant, who went by the username “Jercos,” took Hanyecz up on his offer.
Sturdivant ordered a pizza from Papa John’s, had it delivered to Hanyecz’s house, and uploaded the receipt to show Hanyecz had received his order.
In exchange, Hanyecz sent Sturdivant 10,000 BTC from his crypto wallet.
At the time, neither party had any inkling that a decade later, that 10,000 BTC would be worth over $650 million dollars based on today’s Bitcoin price.
Sturdivant has said if he had held onto that BTC stash instead of transferring it to another buyer shortly after for $400, he’d be a multimillionaire today.
Instead, both Hanyecz and Sturdivant got to claim a small piece of crypto history.
Hanyecz’s purchase marked the first time Bitcoin was used to buy a physical product or service, other than the crypto mining rigs and technology used by early adopters.
While some claim there were potentially smaller Bitcoin transactions for goods before this, Hanyecz’s purchase is considered the first publicly recorded instance of merchant adoption and using Bitcoin as a medium of exchange for consumer products.
The purchase was partly a stunt by Hanyecz to raise awareness of Bitcoin’s ability to act like real money, rather than just as speculative crypto tokens.
In an interview years later, he said, “I don’t regret it. I think that it helped plant the consequences about change and thinking, me doing it.”
Bitcoin Pizza Day is an important milestone in Bitcoin transcending its origins as a pet project of a handful of coders and potentially becoming a revolutionary new form of money and financial system.
Bitcoin has carved out an important niche as a store of value and alternative asset.
So on this Bitcoin Pizza Day 2024, Bitcoin fans worldwide likely are raising a slice to Laszlo Hanyecz.
Paying tribute to his $650 million pizza purchase that captured people’s imagination and planted the first seeds for the Bitcoin revolution unfolding today.
