This Pizza Cost $750,000 Because This is the Internet

Say you’re a programmer in 2010, and you happen to have a ton of bitcoin, the new internet currency that was coined in 2009 as a response to fluctuating national currency. Your enormous stockpile is pretty much useless, however, because bitcoin is worth $0.03. You decide that you like pizza more than you like valueless internet currency, so you put a post on a message board offering a stranger 10,000 bitcoin to order you a pizza from Papa Johns. A stranger accepts, buys you a $25 pizza, you hand over the 10,000 bitcoin and forget about it.

Fast forward three years. The value of the bitcoin has skyrocketed from $0.03 to $75, which means that your $25 pizza ended up costing you approximately $750,000.

This sounds like the kind of cautionary tale they tell you in 12th grade econ during the unit on wise investments, but it’s exactly what happened to Laszlo Hanyecz. Through one ill-timed monetary exchange, he managed to make history by making the first bitcoin transaction and what was probably the worst deal of all time simultaneously. Although the deal probably could’ve been worse. At least he got to eat a pizza.

H/T + PicThx Motherboard