10,000 bitcoin, a pizza and an epic story

For more than a decade, it has been inevitable for Bitcoiners to associate May with pizza. The epic purchase of two pizzas for 10,000 bitcoin by Laslzo Hanyecz in 2010 is already part of the Bitcoin History books and was immortalized with its own day: Bitcoin Pizza Day. Every May 22, we bitcoiners put the HODL doctrine on hold to celebrate the first exchange of bitcoin for a good in the physical world, or at least that’s what we usually hear about that day.

In founding events, whether of a country, a neighborhood club, or Bitcoin, over time reality and mythology tend to become confused, or facts are adapted to make the story more interesting. In this case, contrary to what the headlines say, Hanyecz did not directly buy the two pizzas using 10,000 bitcoin. The payment to the pizzeria was made by another user of the historic Bitcoin Talk forum with his credit card.

But we do not intend to be spoilsports. Hanyecz sent 10,000 bitcoin and he received two Papa Johns pizzas, that’s true. Whatever happened in between remains off-chain. In fact, there is more talk about the pizza buyer, and not so much about the Englishman Jeremy Sturdivant, known on the internet as hiercoswho placed the order for the two pizzas using his credit card at a Papa Johns across the Atlantic bound for Hanyecz’s home.

Beyond the details, Bitcoin Pizza Day has been a resounding success. The date causes fascination in mainstream media every year. Could it be pizza, a universal symbol with which we all have some type of relationship? Or is it the morbidity that a person has spent almost 0.05% of the 21 million bitcoins that will ever exist and show their value in updated dollars (today: more than US$700 million)? It is probably a combination of several factors that has made this anecdote a success, and an achievement of the spontaneous Bitcoin marketing department.

The transaction between laszlo and hiercos It is one of the first records of a bitcoin transaction for a physical world good or service. And if it is not the first, it is the one of which there are records, and it is accompanied by an epic story.

Besides, It is a transaction exclusively possible thanks to the existence of Bitcoin. Without Bitcoin, in addition to the obvious of not being able to send bitcoin, there was no alternative for two users of a forum to make a transaction without the need to reveal personal data, without requiring authorization from a third party, without speculating whether the other party could reverse the operation and without leaving the sofa at home.

One in Florida, the other from Great Britain, using a forum, an IRC chat and Bitcoin.

Bitcoin Marketing

The events remembered on Bitcoin Pizza Day tick all the boxes for an anecdote about Bitcoin to take on epic traits.

First of all, it is an event from bitcoin’s infancy, and involves a large amount of bitcoin, the purchasing power of which has multiplied by several orders of magnitude. Secondly, pizza is an item that anyone can easily relate to and a universal food in this part of the world. Third, it marks a milestone by being the first recorded bitcoin transaction for a physical good. And fourthly, it exudes positivity, unlike anecdotes in which someone loses access to thousands of bitcoins and has to look for them in a garbage dump or spends them on some absurd object.

And fifthly, Hanyecz’s gesture of driving bitcoin adoption by spending a large amount of bitcoin for it, and subsequent pizza purchases he made at that stage, is an example of dedication. The combination of all these factors turned May 22 into a date that calls everyone to talk about Bitcoin and the power of interacting economically freelywith rules but without restrictions.

Bitcoin’s path is just beginning to be written. We leave behind early history, where 10,000 bitcoin was the price of two pizzas and, on average, 7,200 bitcoin per day and more than 2.6 million per year were generated. However, we are still in what in a few centuries will be considered the “antiquity” of Bitcoin, with many other milestones still to be written.

Being able to understand the early years of Bitcoin is essential to understanding Bitcoin. From the genesis block to Bitcoin Pizza Day, through the block size war, the halving or the adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender in El Salvador, are milestones that attract attention to Bitcoin. They are just the first. The vast majority of pages of this book, and blocks of the chain, have yet to be written.

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