May 22 is a special day for Bitcoin enthusiasts. It’s also a reminder of what cryptocurrency was made for in the first place.
Once upon a time, way back in the early ‘10s, people used Bitcoin to buy things. Crazy, right? This was before people started speculating en masse in cryptocurrency; Bitcoin was worth something like 40 cents at the end of 2010, and still just around $200 in 2013 when the first Bitcoin ATM was installed at a coffee shop in Vancouver.
Things would change drastically after that. As more people valued Bitcoin for its investment potential, treating it as a store of value rather than a means of exchange, the price of Bitcoin shot up. If you were one of the intrepid people who used Bitcoin to buy things during the “Satoshi Era,” you’ve probably smacked your forehead a few hundred times since then.
Instead, let’s celebrate your pioneer spirit before heading to the crypto betting sites – especially if you’re Laszlo Hanyecz. We’re coming up on a special day in Bitcoin history: May 22 is the anniversary of the first time Bitcoin was ever used to purchase goods. It was way back in 2010, and yes, as you can tell by the title of this article, it was for pizza.
Who Is Laszlo Hanyecz?
Mr. Hanyecz was a computer programmer from Florida, aged 28 at the time, and one of the early Bitcoin “miners” – the people who get paid in Bitcoin for verifying transactions on the blockchain.
Before the first Bitcoin halving event in 2012, miners were rewarded with 50 BTC for every block they cleared. Having amassed a big pile of BTC, and feeling a bit peckish, Hanyecz decided it was time to put some of that Bitcoin to its intended use – as money. He went on the BitcoinTalk internet forum and offered 10,000 BTC to anyone who would order, collect and deliver him pizza, preferably two large pies.
There were no takers at first. One of the people responding to Hanyecz’s post said that those 10,000 BTC would get him $41 at a crypto exchange. Four days passed before a 19-year-old named Jeremy Sturdivant decided it was time to do some business. Sturdivant purchased two pizzas from Papa John’s – one cheese, one “supreme” – gave them to Hanyecz, and collected his BTC, thus marking the first known goods purchase in Bitcoin.
Who Is Jeremy Sturdivant?
It takes two to tango, so let’s also give Sturdivant his moment in the sun. Sturdivant was a student and product development engineer who went by the alias “jercos” on BitcoinTalk; according to his account, Sturdivant contacted Hanyecz using Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and agreed to the deal.
We know what Hanyecz did with his 10,000 BTC. But what about Sturdivant? Did he hold those coins and become a crypto zillionaire? Heck no: He says he spent it all while traveling the U.S. with his girlfriend.
As for Hanyecz, those two pizzas were just the beginning. He told Coin Telegraph in 2018 that he spent 100,000 BTC on pizza in the summer of 2010 – and that he was still using Bitcoin eight years later to buy stuff online.
What Were They Thinking?
They certainly weren’t thinking that Bitcoin would ever be worth US$65,066.14 per token, which is where things stand as we go to press. Hanyecz just wanted some pizza, and like a good tech support guy, wanted to help turn people on to Bitcoin.
Sturdivant also went on to use Bitcoin (and later Ethereum and Litecoin) to both buy and sell pizza – his favorite is anything with meat and red onions, including “Hawaiian” pizza with pineapple on it. Other purchases included video games from Steam and Humble.
Both gentlemen say they have no regrets. Their mindset was to use crypto as a currency, just like Satoshi Nakamoto intended. However, it’s a lot harder to do these days; with high volume comes long wait times for transactions to be processed, making Bitcoin impractical when you’re just trying to grab a quick slice.
So how do we get to that beautiful Bitcoin future where we’re all using it as money? Hanyecz was an early supporter of the Lightning Network, a “layer 2” peer-to-peer payment system that lives on the Bitcoin blockchain, allowing speedy micropayment ransactions – like back in 2018 when Hanyecz used Lightning to buy two more pizzas, this time for 0.00649 BTC.
It was still anything but a seamless transaction, though. Hanyecz had to show his delivery guy the first and last four characters of his Lightning payment hash preimage, a security risk that you normally wouldn’t want to take. And as with Papa John’s in 2010, Hanyecz needed a go-between to actually get his pizzas. Looks like this Bitcoin pie needs some more time in the oven before it’ll be ready.
