Take a seat and get comfortable, because this story is an all-time classic! Take a sip of coffee and listen to this:
It all happened on May 22, 2010. The guy's name is Laszlo Hanyecz, a Florida programmer who was one of the few enthusiasts mining Bitcoin on his computer back when the currency was worth practically nothing.
One day, the man got hungry and posted a message on a crypto forum saying something along these lines: "Hey, I'll pay 10,000 Bitcoins to whoever orders me two large pizzas and delivers them to my house." At the time, those 10,000 Bitcoins were worth about 40 dollars. Another guy on the forum took him up on the offer, ordered the pizzas from Papa John's with his credit card, and had them delivered.
That was the first commercial transaction in history using Bitcoin! That’s why we celebrate “Bitcoin Pizza Day” every May 22.
What happened to those Bitcoins?
The guy who received the 10,000 BTC didn’t keep them forever; he sold them little by little to take some trips and buy a few things. If someone had held on to every last one until today, they’d have a fortune worth hundreds of millions of dollars. In fact, they’re the most expensive pizzas in human history!
So, what became of Laszlo?
He’s still working away as a software developer. People always ask him if he ever bangs his head against the wall or cries at night, but he’s a really laid-back guy. He always says he has no regrets, because at the time Bitcoin was just an experiment, and no one knew whether it would work. Because he dared to spend them, people saw that Bitcoin could actually be used to buy things in the real world.
☕ The coffee lesson:
No beginning seems monumental on day one. Sometimes we’re afraid to use or try new things because we don’t know what will happen tomorrow. But if no one takes the first step to move the market forward and test the technology, great revolutions never get off the ground. Here’s to the pizzas that changed history!
