On May 22, the bitcoin community celebrated the second most important date in its calendar. No other date, save for January 3, 2009 when Satoshi mined the genesis block, is more symbolic. It was on May 22, 2010 that Laszlo Hanyecz purchased two pizzas for 10,000 BTC. Eight years on, the occasion has become part of bitcoin’s mythology.
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Remembering the $83 Million Pizza
On May 18 2009, Laszlo posted a thread on the Bitcointalk forum entitled “Pizza for bitcoins?” In it, he explained: “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!”
Laszlo then went on to list his favorite toppings, before specifying “just standard stuff no weird fish topping or anything like that”. Within days he had a buyer and the deal went through on May 22. The event is symbolic, not so much for the value of those 10,000 BTC today, but because it marked one of the first public instances of bitcoin being used as a means of payment. The pizza thread, like the value of BTC, has since grown and grown, and today runs to 73 pages, having been viewed around 750,000 times.
