Cryptocurrency has countless uses in 2020, even though it is still far from mainstream adoption.
Even so, it is accepted by thousands of online merchants and services around the world, with more continuously joining the trend. However, this was not always the case, and in the early days of Bitcoin, BTC was rather useless, even though it had a low price of a few cents.
So, how did accepting Bitcoin for real-world goods start? Well, there is a story that is widely believed to be the first real-world transaction involving BTC, and it happened in 2010.
Over nine years ago now, on May 22nd, 2010, a man named Laszlo Hanyecz, a Florida-based programmer who mined at least 10,000 BTC, got hungry and decided to order some pizza. He famously offered 10,000 BTC to anyone who brings him two pizzas.
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Of course, some lucky individuals took him up on the offer, and Laszlo did receive his dinner, which he paid 10,000 BTC in total. Those two pizzas are now known as the two most expensive pizzas in history, and their worth today is at around $80 million. During Bitcoin’s peak, however, their worth was $200 million.
The event became so well-known in the crypto space that Bitcoin enthusiasts decided to mark it, and ever since then, May 22nd of each year became known as Bitcoin pizza day and is celebrated by many in the crypto community.
However, this was not the last time that Hanyecz did something like this. After the price of BTC soared, he was interviewed about the event a number of times, and he admitted that he made other offers after that one, most of them involved pizza.Â
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In fact, according to his own estimation, he spent over 100,000 BTC on pizzas, only that was back when BTC price was still less than a penny, which made him happy that he could use it to pay for anything at all. During Bitcoin’s peak, all of those pizzas were valued at $2 billion, in total, while their price today is significantly lower, sitting at $800 million. Still, this is huge amount of money even now, and Hanyecz says that thinking about what his net worth would have been today if he had not spent Bitcoins on food would not be good for him.
Those interested in tracking the value of Laszlo Hanyecz’s famous pizzas can do it easily by following a Twitter bot called Bitcoin Pizza, which updates their value on a daily basis:
Images from Shutterstock
