From Pizza To Lambos: Charting Bitcoin’s First Decade

Ten years ago this month, Satoshi Nakamoto published a paper online introducing the concept of a “purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash” called Bitcoin. But it wasn’t until May 2010, when software developer Laszlo Hanyecz swapped 10,000 Bitcoins for two pizzas, that the virtual currency became a means for buying real-world stuff.

Suffice it to say, you can get a lot more than two pizzas with 10,000 Bitcoins these days.

Here’s a look at how the purchasing power of that original transaction has changed over the past eight years, running the gamut from iPads to Lamborghinis (or Lambos, in industry parlance) as early adopters, true believers, Wall Street financiers and retail investors all jumped on the Bitcoin rollercoaster.

As Bitcoin has grown, so has its user base. Daily transactions topped $1 million in April 2011, roughly a year after the pizza deal.

Dollar value of daily transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain

Of course, the cryptocurrency universe of today is much bigger than just Bitcoin. More than 1,000 digital currencies trade on exchanges around the world, including everything from serious Bitcoin rivals such as Ether to outright jokes like DogeCoin. When cryptomania peaked in January 2018, the market value of cryptocurrencies tracked by CoinMarketCap.com surpassed $835 billion.

Number of new cryptocurrencies on exchanges by month

The coins have since wiped out some $600 billion of that value as regulators cracked down and hopes for widespread adoption waned. As Bitcoin’s first decade comes to a close, it’s still far from clear whether cryptocurrencies will transform global payments, become “digital gold,” or spiral into irrelevance.

At least Hanyecz got his pizzas.