Pizza

Before it was a monument

On 18 May 2010, Laszlo Hanyecz posted a plainly domestic request: he would pay 10,000 BTC for a couple of pizzas, preferably with familiar toppings and no strange fish. Four days later, Jeremy Sturdivant arranged the order and received the coins. The event is now commemorated because later prices make the payment look spectacular. At the time, the difficult part was simply finding someone willing to turn a forum offer into dinner.

Two prices, two kinds of measure

A forum reply estimated the coins at roughly $41 on the very thin BitcoinMarket; Hanyecz later put the food itself at about $25 plus a good tip. History repeatedly recalculates the first figure and leaves the second alone. One measures an asset through later markets; the other measures two pizzas that fed people that evening. Neither is false, but they answer different questions.

What the block preserved

The transfer remains in block 57,043. The negotiation that made it possible happened partly through IRC and was not preserved with comparable precision. The chain can show that keys authorized a transfer down to the satoshi. It cannot show why two people trusted one another, who ordered the food, or what risk a card payment and delivery service absorbed.

The first moving boundary

Bitcoin did not fail on pizza day. It settled exactly the part it was designed to settle. Yet between wanting food and recording a transfer stood a forum, a reputation, a payment card, a restaurant, and a courier. The next sixteen years would automate many such steps. Each removal of a person from one point would create another point where judgment, responsibility, and trust returned.