Eight years ago today, a programmer in America bought two Papa John’s pizzas with 10,000 BTC or $30 USD at the time. It is widely considered as the first-ever product purchased with a cryptocurrency, thus putting the advantages and uses of Bitcoin to the test and proving the potential of peer-to-peer transactions. As the pioneer cryptocurrency constantly experience a tremendous amount of change, the pizzas now cost roughly 84 million US dollars.
COMICAL MILESTONE
According to Laszlo Hanyecz, the programmer who purchased the two pizzas on May 22, 2010, he had no regrets in exchanging his bitcoins for food since it had no significant value back then. Satoshi Nakamoto’s invention was only 2 years old at the time of the purchase and no merchant accepted Bitcoin as a mode of payment yet. To test the transaction properties of the coins he mined online, he posted an offer on the Bitcointalk forum:
“I’ll pay 10,000 bitcoins for a couple of pizzas.. like maybe 2 large ones so I have some leftover for the next day. I like having left over pizza to nibble on later. You can make the pizza yourself and bring it to my house or order it for me from a delivery place, but what I’m aiming for is getting food delivered in exchange for bitcoins where I don’t have to order or prepare it myself, kind of like ordering a ‘breakfast platter’ at a hotel or something, they just bring you something to eat and you’re happy!”
A teenager named Jeremy Sturdivant, under the username “Jercos”, accepted Hanyecz’ offer and made a deal. The transaction was finalized over a chat and the two made a successful peer-to-peer exchange.
BITCOIN PIZZA DAY TIMELINE
To commemorate the purchase, the cryptocurrency community celebrates May 22 as “Bitcoin Pizza Day”. It is an annual remembrance of the comical milestone for Bitcoin and cryptocurrency as a whole and somehow stands as a way to track the soaring prices of digital coins since the first-ever transaction.
The two pizza pies, at the moment, cost $83.7 million or nearly $42 million per piece. With that in mind, let us go back and take another peek at history:
| PRICE OF ONE PIZZA IN DOLLARS | PRICE OF ONE PIZZA IN BITCOINS | Year |
|---|---|---|
| $20.5 | 5000 | 2010 |
| $37,500 | 2,733333333 | 2011 |
| $25,800 | 3,972868217 | 2012 |
| $615,000 | 0,166666667 | 2013 |
| $2,635,000 | 0,39196941 | 2014 |
| $1,205,000 | 0,085062241 | 2015 |
| $2,190,000 | 0,46803653 | 2016 |
| $11,440,000 | 0,00895979 | 2017 |
| $41,100,000 | 0,002494917 | 2018 |
