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Happy Bitcoin Pizza Day!
Today, May 22, marks the eighth annual Bitcoin Pizza Day, commemorating an important milestone in the journey to mainstream bitcoin adoption.
On this day in 2010, Florida-based programmer and early cryptocurrency enthusiast Laszlo Hanyecz enshrined his name in bitcoin lore by paying someone 10,000 bitcoins to order him two pizzas from his local Papa John’s restaurant. The purchase is believed to have been the first time that bitcoin was used in a real-world transaction. Today, those coins are worth nearly $82 million.
“It wasn’t like bitcoins had any value back then, so the idea of trading them for a pizza was incredibly cool,” Hanyecz famously said in a 2013 interview with The New York Times. “No one knew it was going to get so big.”
Hanyecz later christened the nascent Lightning Network (LN) with a similar purchase, though it cost him just 0.00649 BTC (~$53) this time around.
If you’re lucky, you can commemorate Bitcoin Pizza Day at a restaurant that accepts bitcoin directly (CoinMap curates a non-exhaustive list). Don’t worry, the going rate is no longer 10,000 BTC.
Check it out #BitcoinPizzaDay done right! 🍕😃🍺 Well done all for organizing! @BlockBoxx @BlockchainAUS @BitCar_io #pizzaday #bitcoin #allthefoods pic.twitter.com/2d3MaMbju4
— Miss Sheree (@missdiorsheree) May 22, 2018
If not, you can use your BTC to purchase a gift card to your favorite pizza restaurant. Gyft and eGifter are two popular gift card providers that accept bitcoin — and the latter is currently running a sale on Dominos gift cards.
It was still a bit early for pizza in the Western Hemisphere at the time of writing, but cryptocurrency users on the other half of the globe have already shared pictures of their celebratory slices across social media.
Cryptocurrency trading platform and brokerage firm eToro sent a “literal bitcoin pizza” to the offices of financial publication Business Insider UK.
It’s #BitcoinPizzaDay so @eToro sent us some literal bitcoin pizza pic.twitter.com/SDaMNYiBJZ
— Oscar Williams-Grut (@OscarWGrut) May 22, 2018
Satoshi Labs, meanwhile, celebrated with a pineapple-and-jalapeno topped pie — a recipe it dubiously described as Satoshi’s true vision.
Cryptocurrency hardware wallet manufacture Ledger even released a special “pizza day” edition of its classic Nano S wallet, which is limited to 1,337 units.
Much has changed over the past eight years. The bitcoin community has exploded in size — and experienced contentious debates about the future of the protocol, not to mention the wider ecosystem. But while arguments over blocksize, ASIC mining, and initial coin offerings may frequently divide us, Bitcoin Pizza Day provides us with an opportunity to focus on what unites us — a passion for cryptocurrency and a love of good pizza.
Featured Image from Shutterstock
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