Pizza transaction

On May 18, 2010, developer Laszlo Hanyecz posted on bitcointalk offering 10,000 BTC for two large pizzas. On May 22, 2010, he reported success: another forum user ("jercos," Jeremy Sturdivant) ordered the pizzas and received the 10,000 BTC. It is celebrated as the first well-documented purchase of physical goods priced in bitcoin, and May 22 is informally observed as "Bitcoin Pizza Day."

Nuance: The trade was pizza-for-BTC via an intermediary who paid the pizzeria in dollars — the merchant itself did not accept bitcoin. Hanyecz repeated the offer and spent tens of thousands more BTC on pizzas that summer; the famous 10,000 figure is the first completed trade, not his total.

Common misstatements:

• "The first Bitcoin transaction was for pizza." — First commercial purchase; the first transfer was Satoshi→Finney, January 2009 (see first-transaction-block-170).
• "It happened on May 18." — The offer was May 18; the completed trade he reported was May 22, the commemorated date.
• Framing the price as foolish in hindsight without noting bitcoin had no liquid market price in May 2010 — contemporaneous estimates put 10,000 BTC around $41.