Bitcoin Pizza Day is one of the most important events in the crypto community in general. This date celebrates a before and after in the history of Bitcoin, a moment that marked the beginning of the revolution we know today.
In this blog, we will tell you the story of how Italian cuisine proved to the world that Bitcoin was of real use.
When serious pizza eating is necessary
On May 18, 2010, Laszlo Hanyecz set himself a very clear goal, to eat pizza and pay only in Bitcoin.
The big obstacle is that at that time, Bitcoin was not the global phenomenon that it is today, in fact, at that time a few were aware of the project.
Laszlo posted his exchange offer on the bitcointalk.org forum and it was quite clear. “I will pay 10,000 BTC to the person who buys me 2 large pizzas.”
Days went by and it seemed that no one was interested in the exchange, until on May 22, Jeremy Sturdivant, a 19-year-old, agreed to bring Laszlo 2 large Papa Johns pizzas in exchange for his BTC.
Since then, 13 years have passed and those two pizzas became the most expensive pizzas in the world. Well, as of today, the amount paid for those two pizzas is equivalent to approximately $268,982,560, considering that at the time of writing this article, each bitcoin costs $26,885.
The curious thing about this story is that Laszlo did not stop there, he estimates that he spent more than 100,000 Bitcoins on pizzas, because thanks to the success of the first purchase, he continued to repeat the operation.
And Laszlo sure is sorry
In your mind it may be that it was completely crazy to spend so much money on pizzas, but it's not that much, for something the community celebrates this date with such love every year.
Thanks to Laszlo and Jeremy, everything Satoshi Nakamoto said in the Bitcoin whitepaper made sense.
Also, don't worry about Laszlo, he was able to save for several years and use all those cryptocurrencies to buy mansions, luxury cars and even have his own pizzerias, but there will always be the memory that on May 22, the first purchase of physical goods was made using cryptocurrency.
This was also a change for mining
Before this exchange, Bitcoin only cost a few cents on the dollar and mining new blocks was nowhere near as complicated as it is today.
Miners received 50 BTC for each new block they mined, which is why Laszlo could afford to spend 10,000 BTC on a pizza, because for him it was nothing more than “free pizza”.
Thanks to their purchase, people in the crypto community realized that cryptocurrencies could be used like any other currency in the world.
Laszlo also created the first software for mining cryptocurrency using a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). So we can also thank him for making life easier for miners.
But... What about Jeremy?
You may think that Jeremy was lucky, because he only had to invest 2 pizzas to obtain 10,000 BTC, which sounds like a great investment, but although we would like to hear that he is now a millionaire, the reality is that he is not.
Jeremy dedicated himself to spending his cryptocurrency, but at least he managed to get the most out of it by paying the costs of several trips with his girlfriend around the United States.
The important thing is that neither of them regret their decisions; on the contrary, they consider that it was an action that helped boost the adoption of cryptocurrencies and are happy to be part of the Bitcoin story.
The rest of the crypto community also celebrates this event, the tradition is to buy big pizzas using Bitcoin, although today you only have to spend a few satoshis.
If you want to celebrate this great day, you shouldn't wait 4 days like Laszlo to exchange your cryptocurrencies.
You just have to create your account in El Dorado and exchange your cryptocurrencies in minutes for your local currency. Or you can also pay using internal transfers between El Dorado users.
You decide how to pay for your pizzas!
