Buying Pizza With Bitcoin: Now And Then
8 years ago, on May 22nd 2010, a guy named Laszlo Hanyecz paid 10,000 Bitcoin for 2 pizzas. I will spare you the intellectual effort required to calculate how much this is worth today: at the current market price it's $9,432,000. Yeah, almost $10 million for 2 pizzas.
Of course, no one could have predicted Bitcoin will get that high 10 years ago (well, maybe Satoshi).
The interesting part of the story comes now, though, when the same guy, Laszlo Hanyecz, made another pizza order, this time paying only 0.00649 Bitcoin, or about $61 for 2 pizzas. The order was made specifically for testing the new Lightning Network technology and, although it's still far from being market ready, the whole episode proved that the technology is ready.
Of course, the context is different now and it's quite obvious that we won't need another 8 years until LN becomes the de facto standard in ecommerce.
If you're curious about the technical part (what's a Lightning node, how a transaction gets validated and so on and so forth) you can have a look at this thread on the Lightning Netowrk mailing list, where Laszlo published his second coming.
Sorry, his second pizza story.
I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.
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History reapeats itself it is said in the technical analysis but this time it seems another great example of the coincidence where only satoshi is the real God.
As Rick Falkvinge put it, this guy is a hero. He started the true first test case, viability test use in the open market. Those who think he should have hold doesn't understand how it all jives, and would get good solid information and education from Rick's video.
Well its about opportunity and Laszlo availed it Future can't be predicted but sometimes follow instincts
I also heard this story about pizza many times but didn't realize it was for real.
That means now is a good time to buy. Once transaction fees plummet we'll probably see renewed interest in Bitcoin.
Fees have already plummeted because people have steered away from using bitcoin for transactions because of the high fees.
Lightning doesn't really look nearly like a good scaling solution to me. In the short term bitcoin will probably surge on its popularity and in the medium term lightning will probably help, but in the long term I think some altcoin(s) will overtake.
Oh how I wish he had ordered pizza from my restaurant 8 years ago :)
There is a taxi driver in our town who accepted taxi fare from his clients (about $50 worth of bitcoins) a few years ago and now those bitcoins are worth $4 000 000
Whoa! Clever driver :)
Whao... 10000 bitcoin for just two pizza, the guy must be wishing he could return those pizza now. In the long run the same will be said of steem i believe. Thanks for the info
That is an interesting story. I had forgotten the guy's name. I don't really hear about the guy who got the bitcoins from that first transaction though. I wonder what he did with them.
Awesome that the lightning network is working correctly thus far. Should do a lot to help BTC become more useful as a currency, not just an asset to hold.
What a story! I know there will be one tiny voice inside Laszlo Hanyecz's head whispering "Just imagine that you kept all that bitcoin. You would have been a zillionaire now" 😁😁😁 By the way, 10 million dollars in Nigerian Naira is almost uncountable ooo
Omg! Is there anything as such?
That's approximately 3.6 billion in Naira.
Smh
I used that phrase "almost uncountable" in a figurative sense. There is no number on earth like uncountable. I am sure @dragosroua got my point right.
DEVELOP SOME CHILL BRO
Oh, I missed a point.
#Onelovebro
His name must have been enlisted there in Guiness Book Of World Record.