Eight years ago, the first reported bitcoin exchange for a consumer product – a couple of Papa John's pizzas – took place.
With a total cost of 10,000 bitcoins, it was a milestone for the adoption of cryptocurrency and one that has since been celebrated with the May 22nd celebration as "Bitcoin Pizza Day".
Yet even the most superficial observation of Bitcoin Pizza Day is not complete without a precise calculation of how much, in terms of dollars, those two pizzas cost. With this, CoinDesk is publishing a new widget that provides a real-time calculation that you can add to any website.
At the time of printing, this is about $ 83.7 million for the two cakes, or just under $ 42 million apiece.
But why does this matter? To understand, it is necessary to rewind the clock until 2010.
In mid-May of that year, a programmer named Laszlo Hanyecz tried to swap some of his hard-earned pizza bitcoins – a few days later, he was able to do it with the help of another forum user. Bitcoin Talk online, so a central hub for the cryptocurrency discussion.
An agreement has been reached: 10,000 BTC for two Papa John's pizzas. That admiration for the eyes was worth only $ 25 at the moment or a fraction of a penny each.
Yet at the time, it was not so much the number of bitcoins spent or the product involved – the event was a milestone simply because the transaction had taken place. Although limited to 16 slices of pizza, the bitcoin trade era had begun – not to mention the silent jerk for spending millions of dollars on two pizzas.
"It was not as if bitcoins had value, so the idea of trading them for a pizza was incredibly interesting," Hanyecz said in a 2013 interview with the New York Times, adding:
"Nobody knew it would become so big."
However, tradition continues to live, with the purchase being used to track other important bitcoin achievements.
In fact, it was Hanyecz himself who took part in what could one day be called "Lightning Pizza Day" after using next-generation technology, now under development, to buy a cake in February.
Image of pizza through Shutterstock
[ad_2]Source link