In relation to Bitcoin Pizza Day’s eight-year anniversary last May 22, Laszlo Hanyecz, the Florida-based programmer who made the comical purchase of two Papa John’s pizzas for 10,000 Bitcoins (BTC), has once again shared his insights about the humorous legacy. Bitcoin and Ethereum independent news outlet, Cointelegraph, had a chance to speak with him regarding the incident and how far did the pioneer cryptocurrency change his day-to-day life.
FROM $20 TO $80 MILLION DOLLARS
Ever since the first-ever recorded Bitcoin transaction, the price of the digital coin has grown tremendously. Hanyecz purchased the two pizzas amounting 10,000 BTC or $20 dollars at that time. This year, the estimated amount of purchase is roughly $84 million dollars. It is then fair to suspect that Hanyecz might regret exchanging the bitcoins for two pizzas in 2010, but when asked regarding this matter, he happily answered: “I don’t regret it. I think that it’s great that I got to be part of the early history of Bitcoin in that way, and people know about the pizza and it’s an interesting story because everybody can kind of relate to that and be [like] – “Oh my God, you spent all of that money!”…I’ve always kind of just wanted people to use Bitcoin and buying the pizza was one way to do that.”
BITCOIN IN HANYECZ’S EVERYDAY LIFE
Since Hanyecz is a programmer, he once took part in giving people technological support in Bitcoin forums. Up until now, he claims that he still uses Bitcoin in his everyday life and it easily became his favorite cryptocurrency: “I do [use bitcoins], I try to whenever I can. I’ve bought many things over the years with it, I play around with the Bitcoin software and things like that, but I try to kind of keep it as a hobby.”
Additionally, when asked if he ever thought about buying a pizza with another cryptocurrency besides Bitcoin, he confirmed: “I like Bitcoin. I was around early, when it was just Bitcoin, and to me, the copycat coins or whatever you want to call them – you know 90% of these things are simply a copy-paste of Bitcoin, and they changed the logo, or they changed something. I’m not that interested in those, I am interested in Bitcoin.”
WAYS FOR BITCOIN TO BECOME MORE WIDELY-USED
Bitcoin has a lot of transactional properties that traditional fiat currencies or credit cards cannot do. It is clearly ahead of its time but there are people who are still hesitant to use it. As a response to that, Hanyecz suggested a movement to popularize Bitcoin: “I know you guys covered it when I did the Lightning pizza thing. I feel like when something like that – the Lightning Network or something similar to it – ends up becoming mainstream, usable for people. I think that’s where it’ll become more interesting to actually spend bitcoins face-to-face.”
