Bitcoin Pizza Day is celebrated on 22nd May every year to commemorate the early adopters who paid Bitcoins for Pizza. On 22nd May 2010, Laszlo Hanyecz announced on the Bitcoin forum that he had bought two pizzas for 10,000 Bitcoins. This was the first time Bitcoin was used to buy physical goods giving the crypto currency a market value.
On 18th May 2010, Laszlo said he had agreed to pay Bitcoins for Pizza.
“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 layer. If you’re interested please let me know and we can work out a deal.” Laszlo on the Bitcoin forum. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=137.0
In an interview done later, Laszlo said he absolutely doesn’t have sleepless nights for purchasing 2 pizzas with 10,000 Bitcoins. Laszlo further spent a total of 100,000 Bitcoins that summer, pizza was not the only thing he bought!
I don’t regret it. I think that it’s great that I got to be part of the early history of Bitcoin in that way.
said Laszlo
Jeremy “Jercos” Sturdivant a bitcoin miner and adopter, agreed to buy 2 Pizzas using Bitcoins and they delivered on the 22nd of May from papa John’s pizzas after 4 days.
At the time of this purchase, one Bitcoin was worth estimated to be $0.004. The 10,000 Bitcoins spent were worth $41. In 9 months the prices of the two pizzas went up as Bitcoin was equivalent to the US Dollar. This brought the value of the 2 pizzas to $10k and at least $304,390,000 at the time of writing this article and $689,900,000 at Bitcoin’s all-time high price.
Jeremy, the recipient of the 10,000 Bitcoins eventually sold his Bitcoins for about $400. In an interview, he was quoted saying a currency is meant to be spent.
Bitcoin Pizza day did not become a holiday immediately, but it is now celebrated across the world, just like the New Years.
In Kenya, Women in Blockchain DAO founder Yvonne Kagondu has organized a meet up for this year’s Bitcoin Pizza Day at the iHub in Nairobi. Here is the link to the event http://bit.ly/BTCPizzaDay2022
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