Celebrating Bitcoin Pizza Day: A $300 Million Dinner?

Image source: Get­ty Images

How many Bit­coins would you spend on a cou­ple of pizzas?

Key points

• 12 years ago a Bit­coin enthu­si­ast spent 10,000 Bit­coin on two large piz­zas. Those Bit­coins would now be worth around $300 million.
• Since then, May 22 has been known as Bit­coin Piz­za day — a day to cel­e­brate the first real world Bit­coin transaction. 

It’s 12 years since Las­z­lo Hanyecz made his­to­ry. The cryp­to enthu­si­ast paid 10,000 BTC for two large piz­zas in what’s now regard­ed as the first real world Bit­coin trans­ac­tion. Back then, 10,000 BTC was worth around $40. Today, it’s worth about $300 mil­lion, with which you could prob­a­bly buy a whole chain of piz­za restau­rants and have change.

Hanyecz post­ed the fol­low­ing request on a Bit­coin forum: “I’ll pay 10,000 Bit­coins for a cou­ple of piz­zas. Like maybe 2 large ones so I have some left over for the next day. I like hav­ing left over piz­za to nib­ble on lat­er.” A few days lat­er, he report­ed that he’d suc­cess­ful­ly made the trade. The pro­gram­mer was an active con­trib­u­tor to the Bit­coin com­mu­ni­ty, includ­ing devel­op­ing a new com­put­ing code for mining.

Bitcoin pizza day

Back in 2010, few peo­ple involved imag­ined that Bit­coin would spawn a tril­lion dol­lar mar­ket. Nor did they know that May 22 would for­ev­er be cel­e­brat­ed as Bit­coin piz­za day. Since then, Bit­coin’s been used to pay for every­thing from cups of cof­fee to hol­i­days and lux­u­ry watch­es. You can even buy a house using cryptocurrency. 

Here are some oth­er key moments in the evo­lu­tion of Bit­coin and cryptocurrencies:

• Octo­ber 2008: Satoshi Nakamo­to releas­es whitepa­per that out­lines a form of decen­tral­ized peer-to-peer elec­tron­ic payments. 
• Jan­u­ary 2009: Nakamo­to cre­ates 50 BTC and trans­fers 10 to Hal Finney, an ear­ly Bit­coin adopter.
• May 2020: Hanyecz makes the first real world Bit­coin transaction.
• July 2010: Bit­coin starts trad­ing. By the end of the year, 1 BTC was worth around $0.80.
• Octo­ber 2011: Lite­coin (LTC), one of the first alt­coins, is launched. There are now over 19,000 dif­fer­ent cryp­tocur­ren­cies out there, with many projects that go much fur­ther than act­ing as a decen­tral­ized form of payment. 
• Octo­ber 2013: Silk Road, a kind of black mar­ket plat­form that relied on cryp­to, is shut down by the FBI.
• Feb­ru­ary 2014: Mt. Gox — the biggest cryp­to exchange at the time — is hacked and the com­pa­ny goes bank­rupt. At one point, Mt. Gox han­dled about 70% of all cryp­to transactions. 
• Decem­ber 2014: Microsoft adds Bit­coin as a form of payment.
• Decem­ber 2017: Bit­coin price explodes, open­ing the year at around $900 and fin­ish­ing at around $15,000, accord­ing to Coin­Mar­ket­Cap data. When Forbes said 2017 would be known as the year of Bit­coin, lit­tle did they know the cryp­to king would reach a high of $69,000 in 2021.
• Octo­ber 2020: Pay­Pal enters the cryp­to mar­ket in the U.S.
• Feb­ru­ary 2021: Tes­la announces it will accept Bit­coin pay­ments. The elec­tric car com­pa­ny lat­er back­tracked on this deci­sion, which along with Chi­na’s move to ban cryp­to again, caused 2021’s first major dip in prices.
• March 2021: Mor­gan Stan­ley becomes first big U.S. bank to offer Bit­coin to cer­tain clients.
• Sep­tem­ber 2021: El Sal­vador becomes the first coun­try to make Bit­coin legal tender. 

There are many more mile­stones we could point to, espe­cial­ly in the past few years when cryp­to has made sig­nif­i­cant strides in adop­tion and accep­tance. Nonethe­less, we hope the high­lights above give you a taste of some of the high­lights as we cel­e­brate Bit­coin Piz­za Day.

What it means for investors

2022 has not been the eas­i­est year for cryp­to investors. Many assets are down 50% or more from their Novem­ber highs, and it isn’t clear when the mar­ket might recov­er. Indeed, some fear the mar­ket may not recov­er at all. While there are many rea­sons for opti­mism, there are also no guar­an­tees about what will hap­pen next. 

Nonethe­less, our brief look back at Bit­coin’s his­to­ry is a great reminder of how much has unfold­ed in a rel­a­tive­ly short space of time. Four­teen years ago, Bit­coin was an idea still for­mu­lat­ing in the back of Satoshi Nakamo­to’s mind. He had­n’t even released the whitepa­per. Since then we’ve seen incred­i­ble growth, a fair share of hacks and dodgy deal­ings, as well as a host of oth­er firsts and sig­nif­i­cant milestones.

If you bought cryp­to for the first time last year it’s under­stand­able you’re wor­ried about what might hap­pen to your invest­ments. Per­haps you’ll find some reas­sur­ance in the knowl­edge that the val­ue of a sin­gle Bit­coin has grown from less than $1 to around $30,000 in about 12 years. It has already been a roller­coast­er ride, and we’re sure to see more volatil­i­ty as the indus­try con­tin­ues to head deep­er into unchart­ed waters. What­ev­er else we might say, the sto­ry of the world’s first decen­tral­ized dig­i­tal cur­ren­cy is far from over.