There’s no shortage of horror stories about people either losing or selling their Bitcoins and subsequently missing out hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars, and they never, ever get old, and, thanks to the fact that the value of Bitcoin just seems to keep climbing, these stories will only ever get better.
Today, as the price of Bitcoin hits the $10,000 USD ($13,161 AUD) milestone, we spare a thought for Laszlo Hanyecz, who made what is generally regarded to be the first ever real-world Bitcoin purchase, when he bought two pizzas for 10,000 Bitcoins. Just in case, like me, you spent most of your school maths classes scribbling Linkin Park lyrics into the back of your workbook: that works out to a cool $100,000,000 USD, and an even cooler $131,610,000 AUD.
As Business Insider reported, Hanyecz’ purchase is recorded for posterity in this absurdly flippant, still existent post on the Bitcoin Talk forums:
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. 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!
I like things like onions, peppers, sausage, mushrooms, tomatoes, pepperoni, etc.. just standard stuff no weird fish topping or anything like that. I also like regular cheese pizzas which may be cheaper to prepare or otherwise acquire.
As one astute fellow poster points out, he was being crazy reckless, because those 10,000 Bitcoins are worth way more than the price of two pizzas:
10,000… Thats quite a bit.. you could sell those on https://www.bitcoinmarket.com/ for $41USD right now.. good luck on getting your free pizza.
Maybe this is some sort of time paradox thing where Bitcoin wouldn’t have become so popular if he didn’t do this first transaction so there’s no way he could have held on to them and instead ended up insanely rich, but, also: lol.
The day is celebrated by Bitcoin enthusiasts (read: huge nerds with insane piles of digital wealth) as Pizza Day every year to celebrate the transaction and presumably laugh at times when buying something with Bitcoin meant asking a stranger on a forum to somehow get two pizzas to you.
