- Who
- Laszlo Hanyecz
- What
- first first
- Where
- United States (Jacksonville)
- When
The first commercial transaction made using bitcoin took place on 22 May 2010, when software developer Laszlo Hanyecz (USA) offered 10,000 bitcoins to any user on the online forum Bitcointalk who would order two large pizzas for him. A fellow user took Hanyecz up on the offer, paying $25 to order the two pizzas and receiving 10,000 bitcoins (then worth around $41) in return.
At the time, Bitcoin was little more than a cryptographic curiosity, something of interest only to a small group of enthusiasts. Hanyecz had what was then a powerful mining rig (a computer with two GPUs) and the difficulty of mining new coins was still relatively low. Hanyecz could mine several thousand bitcoins in a day, and as a result, he considered the exchange to be "free pizza".
Today, members of the cryptocurrency community celebrate 22 May as "Bitcoin Pizza Day", marking the occasion by, you guessed it, ordering pizza. Given the exponential rise in the value of Bitcoin, much has been made of the long-term cost of this transaction – 10,000 bitcoins is worth $350,160,000 as of 24 Feb 2022 – but Hanyecz has said he does not regret the purchase.
