By
Steve Muchoki
April 23rd, 2024
Happy Bitcoin Pizza Day! Eight years ago Laszlo Hanyecz made a history buying two pizzas for 10,000 Bitcoins. It was the first ever purchase with BTC.
Those who try to stay tuned with the news from the crypto sphere definitely know that Bitcoin had some really crazy moments in its history. A number of them will stay forever in archived internet chat forums. There are also a lot of mysteries in its history, like the real name of its creator widely known as Satoshi Nakamoto.
Today, May 22 is another symbolic day in Bitcoin’s mythology. This day is now called Bitcoin Pizza Day. Eight years ago, on May 22, programmer Laszlo Hanyecz decided to buy some pizza. So, to get two Papa John’s pizzas he paid another Bitcoin talk forum user just 10,000 BTC. At that time, it was only $25 which was quite a good price for those pizzas.
But in 2018 the situation is totally different. That 10,000 BTC is worth $82,078,100 (-3.33% from yesterday as it is informed by CoinMarketCap at press time) . Now it sounds really ridiculous, that’s why there is no surprise that such a deal turned into one of the strongest memes of the cryptocurrency world.
The #Bitcoin pizza is worth $83,131,600 today. (-2% from yesterday) Today is Bitcoin pizza day!
— Bitcoin Pizza 🍕 (@bitcoin_pizza) May 22, 2018
Just a year ago, when the crypto community was celebrating Bitcoin Pizza Day, the amount of 10,000 BTC was worth over $21 million. And already at that time it seemed to be unbelievable.
Laszlo Hanyecz is now a well-known person in the crypto community. Giving an interview last year he explained the events of 2010 the following way: “It wasn’t like bitcoins had any value back then, so the idea of trading them for a pizza was incredibly cool. No one knew it was going to get so big.”
And in general, such his position is quite understandable. Even the creators of Bitcoin were not confident about the future of this cryptocurrency. It was believed that Bitcoin would either have an enormous value, or it would be worth nothing at all.
Today, it is possible to purchase practically anything you want with Bitcoin, though it may take some time to find a necessary app to do it and to wait for a confirmation of your transaction.
Of course, it is also possible to buy pizza, but it is difficult to believe that today someone may want to purchase it paying an amount that could be enough to fuel between two and four ICO projects.
But if you think that this legendary purchase in 2010 is the only interesting thing about Hanyecz, it is not so. This year, he has made news once again: he has bought pizza through the Lightning Network that is a second layer protocol developed atop the Bitcoin’s blockchain network.
On February 25, Hanyecz announced that he had purchased pizza having made a payment using the Lightning Network. This time he paid only 649000 satoshis, or 0.00649 bitcoins which means that he paid nearly $62 for both pizzas.