Today marks the 16th anniversary of that first purchase with Bitcoin—two pizzas would now cost $770 million.

Sixteen years since the first “Bitcoin pizza”

Today marks the sixteenth anniversary of the day when a real item was bought with Bitcoin for the first time – two pizzas costing 10,000 coins. At today’s rate this is roughly equivalent to $770 million.

How it all began
- May 22, 2010 – American programmer Laszlo Hanyecz, working on mining algorithms, posted a message on the Bitcointalk forum. He offered to send 10,000 bitcoins to anyone who would order him two pizzas.

- The reply came from student Jeremy Sturdivant, who paid $40 for two mushroom pizzas at Papa John’s. This became the first known purchase of a real good with Bitcoin.

Why it matters
- Since 2017 the cryptocurrency community has celebrated May 22 as Bitcoin Pizza Day.

- At today’s rate, 10,000 bitcoins are worth about $770 million. At the time of the transaction the fee was 0.99 BTC – today that would be around $77 thousand.

- The event is regarded as the first purchase of a real product with cryptocurrency and symbolizes how quickly Bitcoin moved from theoretical idea to practical use.

Brief biography of Laszlo Hanyecz
- He contributed to the first release of Bitcoin Core for macOS.

- In May 2010 he introduced a GPU mining algorithm. Although the idea of GPU mining was not fully developed by Satoshi Nakamoto, the community adopted it and adapted it for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Current situation
- Bitcoin’s market capitalization today is about $1.5 trillion.

- Bitcoin Pizza Day remains a symbol of how far the digital asset has progressed over 16 years since that first real purchase.