The most expensive pizza in the history of people eating pizza was bought one day in May 2010 by a Jacksonville, Florida, Man.
Today, only one slice of this pizza is worth millions. But at the time, the two pizzas were only worth $ 41.
The purchase was part of an advertisement planned by Laszlo Hanyecz, who had decided to order the pizza using this brand new digital currency called Bitcoin.
As was common at that time, Hanyecz published his idea in a fairly informal way in an online forum with other bitcoiners.
He remembers this post that did something like that in various media articles: “You know, if someone is interested, I offer 10,000 bitcoins in exchange for pizzas.”
Before too long, someone named Jeremy Sturdivant, originally from England, decided to take Hanyecz on the offer.
Once he received the Bitcoins from Hanyecz, Sturdivant used a conventional credit card to order and pay the pizza of a Papa John’s in Jacksonville, Florida, where he was delivered directly to the Hanyecz door.
Hanyecz, who hoped to raise awareness of Bitcoin, then sent press releases at the time to the media across the country, including a small editorial room in Park Hills, Missouri, where this journalist worked at the time.
The press release was widely ignored. It was an event that took place in Florida without any obvious local angle in Missouri, using something obscure, no one had heard yet. He went directly to file 13, never to be seen again.
But three years later, this small purchase of pizza was astronomically worth more than $ 41. About $ 750 million was worth in 2013.
Heck, even on the 2023 lower market, the purchase of pizza was still worth $ 268 million.
The value has just continued to withdraw, and Hanyecz is frequently called to recall his pizza waterfall on May 22, which became known as Bitcoin Pizza Day.
In today’s dollars, the purchase of pizza is worth a cool of $ 814,464,800, according to Coalwhich offers accounting services for cryptocurrencies.
Purchase of the most expensive crypto of all time
These pizzas are not even the most expensive article ever bought with Bitcoin.
This honor goes to a hotel by Condo Trump Soho worth 2.08 billion dollars in 2024. Today known as Dominick, the 46 -storey condo hotel was registered for sale in 2013 with a stipulation that the purchase had to be 100% bitcoin.
The transaction, when it finally occurred, was 25,500 bitcoin (BTC) which had a value of around $ 2 million at the time. Today, however, these same Bitcoins are worth 2.67 billion dollars, making it the most expensive Bitcoin bitcoin ever recorded, according to Coinledger.
It is quite possible that there are other costly transactions that no one really knows. Indeed, at the start of Bitcoin, people were just trying to use the digital currency, to explore how it worked for one and tried to make sure that it remained viable for another.
Among those who remember that the time is Wyoming long cardlin, today CEO of the Gustodia Bank, which manages digital assets like Bitcoin and has been the pioneer of a financial track which can transfer Bitcoin to digital and / or physical American dollars and again with Bitcoin.
“Each year, Bitcoin Pizza Day, they still ask (Hanyecz) a comment on this because these pizzas are worth almost a billion dollars now,” said a lot. “And he has the same approach as me. You cannot look at it in this way. The network would not be where it is today if someone had not started using bitcoins in transactions like this.”
In the end, it is a measure of the measure in which Bitcoin arrived since his inventing in 2008 and a quietly recorded domain appeared titled Bitcoin.org, followed with a little white paper on Bitcoin in 2009, which was distributed to a crypto distribution list little known by a Satoshi Nakamoto.
It is believed that the name was an alias, and the person or the people behind it has not yet been identified. Nakamoto disappeared in spring 2011, with billions, and not a whisper has been heard since.
Many people have presented theories on whom he or she could have been, but the mystery today is not resolved.
Bitcoin Trades helped him become what he is today
Long was just starting with Bitcoin in 2012, but she had her own pizza moment in 2014.
“I saw that Overstock.com was the first big company of brand name to get involved with Bitcoin,” she recalls. “So I wanted to support them and, at the time, everyone was trying to understand – because Mount Gox had just failed – if Bitcoin was going to survive.”
Mount Gox was an exchange based in Tokyo which managed around 70% of Bitcoin tradies at the time. They failed after the hackers interrupted and stole thousands of bitcoins. Long, like many bitcoins at the time, was looking for means of helping this new cryptocurrency platform to survive what had been thrown at the time as a catastrophic failure of cryptocurrencies.
So she decided to buy Christmas gifts with some of her Bitcoin that year. With a single Bitcoin exchanging about $ 320 at the time, a purchase of $ 640 would be 2 bitcoins. Today is about $ 208,000.
“I don’t like to think about it, but that’s the fact that you can’t look at it in this way,” she said. “It is almost the same as a bitcoin donation appreciated in 2017 to finance the endowment of engineers. If I had waited, I could have financed more endowment today, but there were many students who benefited from this money by me by funding it in 2017. And that was also part of the production of bitcoin what it is today. If no one had ever used it, you would never have had the effects of the network. ”
These network effects make Bitcoin resilient today, believes a lot. It’s like the internet. There are enough different distribution points to no longer be closed by a single state player. It would take a concerted effort, and even then, long does not believe that it would succeed. This decentralization was part of the point behind the whole system.
The endowment fund wanted to contribute to Bitcoin for a long time to what stimulated its involvement in the laws on digital assets of Wyoming. She could not make her donation at the time without legislative changes.
Here to stay?
Despite the pragmatic point of view of Long, however, even she admits to taking place occasionally, just a little, that she had put a little more money in Bitcoin at the time.
“We would all be rich,” she said, laughing.
One of the reasons why for a long time has not put more money at the time is the same reason why many financial investors have long advised to give a cryptocurrency pass.
Long remembers having lost some of its pieces when Mount Gox failed in 2014.
“I recovered part of the money 10 years later,” said a long time. “But it was a fraction of the bitcoins that I had bought.”
The financial advisor based in Cheyenne, Bryan Pedersen, also recalls the days of Far West of Bitcoin, at the start.
“In 2011, I had a very good friend to me who, today, is a partner in a large national accounting firm,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “And I asked him at the time what he was doing and he said,” Oh, I exploit this play on the internet. »»
Pedersen could not believe his ears at the time.
“I said to myself:” What are you doing, the Nerds of Dungeons and Dragons? “”, Recalls Pedersen. “Are you going to remove this false piece on the internet to buy like a shield for your sorcerer in dungeons and dragons?” “”
But today, Pedersen’s friend has a few million dollars from his days of Bitcoin extraction.
“I guess we could all have, should have, should have, but remember, there are so many cryptos that collapsed,” said Pedersen. “And if you have chosen the bad, you have zero.”
Pedersen is not as negative about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as at that time.
“I think there is a place for crypto in the future,” he said. “I am not negative on this subject in 2011, when I simply did not understand it. But I do not know how it materializes and if it is controlled by the government or whether it is the free market or whatever the case. ”
But he also looked at the countries of the BRICS – Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates – pushed to find a safety labeled not denominated with.
“We tell the whole world that they must exchange with American dollars, then we print ourselves more,” said Pedersen. “So we devalue our dollar but always tell the rest of the world they have to exchange with him.”
The evolution towards the crypto is something that Pedersen believes in response to this devaluation and has become a new race for economic arms.
“If the new game is crypto, we have to own it,” said Pedersen. “So that we are always the world leader because the largest export in the United States is the dollar … that makes the world banking system. So, if the world goes to a type of cryptocurrency, whether led by the BRICS nations or the United States, we must always say.
This is the reason why Pedersen thinks that cryptocurrencies are there to stay, be it bitcoin or another system.
Renée Jean can be reached [email protected].
