Last Updated on May 22, 2022
Prior to the first bitcoin halving in 2012, each successful miner was rewarded with 50 BTC for discovering a new block. This meant one only needed to mine 200 blocks to earn 10,000 BTC, which wasn’t particularly difficult considering there weren’t that many people competing to mine them at that time.
On May 18, a Floridian programmer named Laszlo Hanyecz, announced on a forum called Bitcointalk.org that he was looking to buy pizza – preferably two large ones – using bitcoin. He offered 10,000 BTC to anyone who would be willing to order, collect and bring them to him. Someone pointed out that he could get $41 for those bitcoins on a certain exchange website, which priced BTC at less than half a cent per coin.
“I just want to report that I successfully traded 10,000 bitcoins for pizza.” The pizzas were made by Papa John’s, but Hanyecz had bought them secondhand from an 19-year-old named Jeremy Sturdivant.
In light of this historic event, the global crypto community comes together every year on May 22 to celebrate the first physical bitcoin transaction.