Interesting that the first online sale and the first Bitcoin transaction are both commonly accepted as being pizza.
I like the idea of a pizza purchase being something of a “Hello World” of new financial transactions. Moving forward I will be keeping an eye out for pizza purchases made leveraging a new technology (and proceed to invest heavily).
The bitcoin pizza thing is illustrative of all the crypto BS to come. The pizza was bought using US dollars from a pizza shop that didn't know what bitcoin was.
The ingredients for the pizza bought online were probably bought in person at a restaurant supply store with no web presence. Everything has to start somewhere.
Yeah, Papa John's is bragging about this first ever BTC tx to buy pizzas from them when in fact some guy from overseas in GB (Laszlo was living in Florida) took up the offer from the online forum [0] and paid for the pizza via credit card, so Papa John's obviously couldn't care less.
>A British man took up Hanyecz's offer and bought the two pizzas for him in exchange for the 10,000 Bitcoins. Even then the recipient of the Bitcoins got himself a bargain, paying $25 for the pizzas, while 10,000 Bitcoins were worth around $41 at the time. [1]
My guess is - since in those early days all enthusiasts were basically "hardcore computer nerds" - the significance of buying a pizza via BTC was at least partially implied through the common knowledge of Pizza Hut's "experiment" in 1994.
When you think about the number of middlemen involved in a credit card transaction, 1) the credit card networks (i.e. Mastercard, visa, etc…), 2) the credit card company/issuer/bank (i.e. Bank of America, Wells Fargo, etc…), 3) credit card processor (i.e. fidelity, square, etc…)…is one more where we draw the line?
It’s really no wonder the average consumer needs to resort to financing their pizza with debt on account 3 middlemen have worked their way into the transaction, all of which are multi-billion dollar organizations that add no value aside from facilitating the very ridiculous debt driven system they created.
Until such day nobody talks about how much a bitcoin is worth in US dollars I don't consider it a currency.
I imagine few people get their salary in BTC and even fewer pay their bills in BTC.
There were some experiments with actually using cryptocurrency directly in the Netherlands but it all petered out.
And here's Papa John's CEO John Schnatter stepping down because he criticized the NFL for not dealing with the “take a knee” anthem protests against police brutality in a manner timely enough to shore up its shrinking, potentially pizza-ordering viewership:
And here's the neo-Nazi media outlet Daily Stormer saying how much they strongly agree with and support John Schnatter's and the Alt-Right's racist views, and proclaiming "Papa John: Official pizza of the alt-right" with a picture of a "SIEG HEIL PIZZA" decorated with a swastika made of pepperoni:
I like the idea of a pizza purchase being something of a “Hello World” of new financial transactions. Moving forward I will be keeping an eye out for pizza purchases made leveraging a new technology (and proceed to invest heavily).