Four years ago this week, on May 22, 2010, a BTC fan and programmer named Laszlo Hanyecz offered 10,000 Bitcoins – about $40 at that time – for two Papa John’s pizzas (pictured above). He wrote:
Laszlo
A volunteer in the UK ordered the pizzas (which explains why he ordered the execrable Papa John’s) for $25 and sent them to Hanyecz, thereby kickstarting the trade of bitcoin for pizza (and other commercial goods). For a brief while, in 2013, those pizzas were worth $6 million a piece and even now they’re worth a cool $3 million each. The UK delivery person, if he or she kept the coin, made one of the best trades in the history of commerce.
Since that fateful night, Bitcoin has powered everything from Overstock.com to the Silk Road (and funded a play about the Silk Road, bought countless pizzas, and now there’s even a Bitcoin ATM in the D hotel in Las Vegas. In short, BTC is everywhere.
What will you do on Bitcoin Pizza Day? Try to order a pie with Dogecoin? Send petition Domino’s to accept Auroracoin? Or will you pour out a few Satoshis for poor Hanyecz who got out a bit early, before the gold rush. “I’d say I ended up on top,” he told Nick Bilton. Perhaps he did, and we owe him a debt of gratitude for being a bit peckish one spring evening and changing the world.