Bitcoin Used in 2010 to Buy 2 Pizzas Now Worth $82M

The cryptocurrency has gone up in price just a bit since then
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted May 23, 2018 8:56 AM CDT
In 2010, 10K Bitcoins Could Buy 2 Pizzas. Today, 6.5M Pizzas
You could buy 6.5 million pizzas with 10,000 bitcoins today.   (Getty Images/Zakharova_Natalia)

Hallmark may need to update its official list of holidays. Tuesday was Bitcoin Pizza Day, or what Business Insider calls "the most celebrated day in crypto," marking the eighth anniversary of when programmer Laszlo Hanyecz made what's thought to be the very first purchase with bitcoin. That purchase, per Quartz: two large pizzas from Papa John's for 10,000 bitcoins, an amount worth about $30 back then. Hanyecz sent his hoarded cryptocurrency to a fellow "bitcoiner," who then placed the order.

The price of bitcoin has spiked just a tad since then. If Hanyecz had kept those 10,000 bitcoins, they'd be worth $82 million or so—an amount Bloomberg has figured out would buy about 6.5 million pizzas. "If you stacked the pizza boxes you can get for that many bitcoins today, they'd rise to outer space," it notes. If you're going by the slice for those original two pizzas, each portion would be worth about $5 million today. Hanyecz, now 36, is celebrating this eight-year milestone in "the perfect way," per Forbes: by cajoling his employer, an online apparel and gear startup, to start accepting bitcoin. (More bitcoin stories.)

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