In defence of 'The guy that spent 10,000btc on two pizzas'

in bitcoin •  8 years ago  (edited)

Ok most of you have heard the story, but just incase you havn't. On the 22nd May 2010 a user on the bitcoin talk forum offer 10,000btc if someone would send him two pizzas, which they did. At the time this was about $25 (not as easy to cash out then) but of course today it is worth, as of writing this, $25,670,000. This is recognised as the first time bitcoin was used to buy something and is celebrated yearly as pizza day.


source pixabay

One of the reasons you have likely heard this story is that it is brought up as an example of wasting bitcoin or as a cautionary tale, as in imagine if he had of just held on to them. These arguments annoy me for these 2 reasons.

We all wasted bitcoins

As bitcoins can be exchanged for money every time everyone of us bought a pizza we could of instead used that money to buy bitcoin instead.

Did you eat a pizza in 2010? If you did you also threw away 10,000btc

That expensive pizza made bitcoin what it is today

The goal of bitcoin is to be a widely used currency and up to that point no one had bought anything with a crypto-currency. On that day in 2010 'Pizza Guy' changed that. Today there are millions of purchases a year that use bitcoin and with more and more vendors accepting it that number is expected to grow rapidly.

Would bitcoin of grown without him, probably. Would bitcoin have grown without people like him? Definitely not.

So next time someones uses 'Pizza Guy' as a cautionary tale, stand up for the guy. Mind you he probably had atleast another 10,000btc so don't feel too bad for him.

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Two pizzas

Thanks for that, updated now

upvoted. His name was Laszlo, I remember it from the news when it first happened.

Old Man Kid from Polo sent me a link to the original chat a few years back. You can find it on the internets.

OMG..Is it true?

"We all wasted bitcoins" - nope I just hodl.

So you spent every spare penny you have on bitcoin? as bitcoin can be exchanged for money spending money is like spending btc.

  ·  8 years ago (edited)

I know that story. I wish a had at least one BTC! Now i have had 2700 $.

this hurts. right in the feels :(

i agree, everyone of us has eaten pizza in 2010, many of us ate more then 10. this guy worth standing up.

Why the nice comment but no upvote? I am seeing it a lot lately and it's starting to annoy me. Sorry to get in your face it has just been getting to me and you the first person I said it to

Its ok for saying so, but i have already consumed votes today, my voting power is down and need to recharge, as you know it take approximately 24 hours to recharge a merely 20% of voting power after the HardFork 19, once i reach 100%, you will see the upvote automatically. No worries, just keep sharing the good work and never worry about votes.
When a person is commenting on your post, it means you are writing good, it also points you will stand from the crown soon. Good Luck :)

yea sorry for venting, but you know you don't have to give a fully vote right, you can give a half vote thereby getting twice the votes a day, or a tenth of a vote and get 10 times the votes

That option is not yet activated for me as i dont have 1 Million or so vests. looking forward the day when i will be able to do so.

opps I've been telling people that, now I feel like a rich asshole. heres a bigger vote

You would be in top 1500 persons of steemit. haha, I am looking forward that day too, buying steem every week from salary. I am not a writer, i am a reader here, and this vote limitation has screwed me. i wish there should be an option at the time of creation READER/Writer.

One more problem is I normally read steemit posts all day but have only damn 10 votes per day to cast, i miss the old times of 40 votes per day very much :(

And the funny story is that if you spend today 20 usd on the right cryptocurrency instead of buying pizza, you can buy in one year 100 pizzas or maybe more(ok not a few millions but still).

People tend to do the same mistakes. Sometimes even if they notices the same mistakes in the past...

The point of the post is that it wasn't a mistake

My mistake:). I don't disagree with your point.

It's not a mistake to buy a pizza. But it's a mistake to point the finger to the guy who brought a 24 million pizza, 7 years ago and to go and in the same time to buy a pizza nowadays when you could invest that amount of money. Anybody who goes and buy a pizza instead of buying some coins simply does what that guy did. And we all are hungry at some point.

I think both points of views are correct, we should now out every two time, buy pizza one time and buy crypto other time. :D
so which is the right cryptocurrency for that other time?

One that could solve some real problems and it's not only coin. One that is already used for real use cases. One which does not suffer from hyperinflation. And it's not only one.

I see eth as a good investment. I started to be fascinated by Steem. Then the ones for sharing resources: maid, storj, sia, golem, etc. Proof of research ones like gridcoin, foldcoin,...

I'm also looking in investment funds like iconomy and taas. A better way to spread risk instead of managing yourself n wallets in different currencies.

The list could continue. The whole blockchain industry is going to grow. It could be the web 3.0, who knows?

This comment has received a 19.29 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @shahzadnisar.

Sure the purchase was great for optics, but not so great for the "Pizza Guys" financial future. Also, who eats pizza with a knife and fork?

So you read the title and looked at the picture, I'll take it

I read the post. I am not a neanderthal. But with your point here, the Pizza Guy would have been better off coaxing someone else to do the same thing and save his own shekels. ;)

Would bitcoin of grown without him, probably. Would bitcoin have grown without people like him? Definitely not.

The article makes you think.. Yeah correct indeed.

Lol very true! Great post @fiveboringgames :)