11 Years Since The First Bitcoin Purchase: 2 Pizzas Now Worth $365 Million

Today is the international Bitcoin Pizza Day! This is a day that many in the crypto community celebrate the 11th anniversary of the first Bitcoin commercial transaction for two pizzas, which cost 10,000 BTC.

On May 22, 2010, Laszlo Hanyecz traded 10,000 BTC for two Papa John’s pizzas in Florida. Years later, they would become the world’s most expensive pizza slices with a price of $365,000,000.00 at press time.

Interestingly enough, they were worth over $600 million when Bitcoin surpassed the $60k barrier on April 11. 

Celebrating Bitcoin Pizza Day

Papa John’s will commemorate the famous transaction by offering 10,000 slices of pizza to the first 50 customers at any of its franchises in Jacksonville. Customers will have a chance to win a large BTC-inspired pizza.

Papa John’s is not the only one celebrating, although. Slice, a platform that connects pizzerias in the U.S., and Rare Pizzas, an NFT project on PizzaDAO, are giving away 2,500 pizzas, dishing out over 1 BTC’s worth of pies made by local pizzerias across the country.

Bitcoin and Pizza

Another franchise that started accepting BTC is Pizza Hut, which now allows Venezuelans to pay in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, noting the country is one of the largest BTC users in the world due to fiat hyperinflation, a result of bad local policy and U.S. sanctions.

When we talk about Bitcoin adoption, we might think of elite institutions in the financial world like MicroStrategy or SkyBridge Capital —powerful companies that added BTC to their balance sheets. However, a small family-owned pizzeria also decided it was time to put some of its capital into the father of all cryptos.

Sam & Greg’s Pizzeria/Gelateria is one of the few small businesses that invested in cryptocurrencies about an year ago. Greg Hathron, the co-founder, revealed to CryptoPotato that cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology represent “the smartest use of the internet to date.” Hence, his decision to allocate US$200,000 from the balance sheet into Bitcoin during the COVID-19 outburst, which caused severe nosedives to global financial markets. 

“So, why bitcoin for my business? The simple answer is that I have worked hard to save money, and I don’t like seeing it disrespected and devalued. I also do not appreciate politicians and central banks reducing the value of the American worker to the speed of a printer. Bitcoin solves these problems.” — Greg told CryptoPotato