It’s Friday, May 22, 2020, and two pizza pies cost $45.90 at Stromboli's, across from my apartment in New York City. But 10 years ago, in Florida, two pies from Papa John’s cost Laszlo Hanyecz about $41—or 10,000 bitcoins, which is how he paid. And how Bitcoin Pizza Day was born.
On May 22, 2010, two pizza pies were bought by a person named Laszlo Hanyecz through a bitcoin forum. While the pies themselves were mundane, the transaction was revolutionary—they were bought with 10,000 bitcoins, worth roughly $41 at the time. Now that one purchase gages the health of the entire $258 billion cryptocurrency market. Even the some of the biggest cryptocurrency nuts probably couldn’t tell you if the bitcoin whitepaper came out in 2008 or 2009 (it was January 3, 2009). But while even fewer can tell you the day that Ethereum launched (July 30, 2015),many in blockchain can list May 22 as blockchain’s pretty much only holiday. Bitcoin Pizza…