Bitcoin has crossed the $100,000 threshold for the first time. At approximately 21:39 CET tonight, the value of the cryptocurrency reached six figures for the first time in its nearly 16-year history.
This also means that the legendary Bitcoin pizza order is now worth $1 billion. For those who don’t know, a Florida man paid 10,000 BTC for two Papa John’s pizzas over 14 years ago, which is considered the first commercial transaction in cryptocurrency.
“I’ll pay 10,000 bitcoins for a couple of pizzas… maybe 2 large ones so I have some left over for the next day,” Laszlo Hanecz wrote on a crypto forum on May 18, 2010. Four days later, the Briton responded to his offer. At that time, the amount was only $45. (And the Briton paid Papa John’s only $25!) But only nine months later, the cost of the transaction soared to $10,000.
In 2013, in an interview with The New York Times, Ganetsch said he had no regrets about ordering a $6 million pizza. “Back then, bitcoins had no value, so the idea of exchanging them for pizza was incredibly cool,” he said. “No one knew it would become so big.”
I wonder if Florida Maine has any regrets now that its fee for two Papa John’s pizzas is a billion dollars?
Looking at it another way, Papa John’s current market capitalization is $1.567 billion. So, if the Ghanaian had kept his cryptocurrency instead of ordering those two pizzas, he could have bought almost two-thirds of the company that bakes his pie today.
And then there’s the story of a writer who in 2017 helped a friend recover (at the time) $200,000 worth of bitcoins from a broken laptop. Those 40 bitcoins that were stuck in MultiBit’s wallet for three and a half years are now worth more than $4 million (as long as the cryptocurrency stays above the $100,000 mark).
