05/23/2024
Happy Bitcoin Pizza Day! It's not an urban legend! It really happened! This chronicle of the actual event resulting in the annual celebration is from the Coinbase Bytes Newsletter today:
A brief history of Bitcoin Pizza Day, crypto’s cheesiest holiday
“I just wanted to report that I successfully traded 10,000 bitcoins for pizza,” wrote Florida-based programmer Laszlo Hanyecz on May 22, 2010, documenting the first-known BTC transaction for a physical good — a moment we now commemorate each year as Bitcoin Pizza Day.
What exactly happened?
Fourteen years ago, Hanyecz posted on a bitcoin forum offering 10,000 BTC (worth about $40) to anyone willing to send him pizza. A college student named Jeremy Sturdivant took him up on the deal and had two large Papa John’s pizzas delivered to Hanyecz’s house.
At the time, there weren’t any systems in place that would allow for seamless crypto transactions, so Sturdivant used cash to pay for the order. The entire deal — from the time Hanyecz posted his request until he received the pizzas — took two days.
How much would the BTC be worth today?
Just a little bit more. As of Monday, 10,000 BTC was worth about $677 million, or roughly 35 million large cheese pizzas.
Did Sturdivant hold on to the BTC?
Nope! He eventually sold it to fund a trip with his girlfriend.
Does Hanyecz regret spending that much BTC on pizza instead of HODLing?
“I don’t regret it,” he told Cointelegraph in 2018. “I think that it's great that I got to be part of the early history of Bitcoin … I’d like to think that what I did helped.”