What is Bitcoin Pizza Day? Uncovering the behind-the-scenes story of the "tens of billions" transaction, the love of loyal fans is not without reason

What is "Bitcoin Pizza Day"?

Nowadays, the use of cryptocurrency for payment and shopping has become more and more popular. However, 15 years ago when the first cryptocurrency "Bitcoin" was born, Bitcoin's uses were very limited. Did you know that the world's first user of cryptocurrency People who use money to "buy something" bought something?

Bitcoin was officially born in January 2009, but at that time, most of the people who knew about Bitcoin were "senior nerds", and most people had basically never heard of Bitcoin. In May 2010, Laszlo Hanyecz, an American programmer who was a Bitcoin enthusiast, had a sudden idea, "I wonder if I can exchange Bitcoin for food?"

However, at that time, Bitcoin had just come out and was almost worthless. Naturally, no store was willing to accept Bitcoin as a payment currency.

So, on May 18, Hannix posted an article on a forum called Bitcointalk.org, saying that he wanted to use Bitcoin to "purchase" two large pizzas and was willing to pay extra for these two large pizzas. Delivery to your doorstep costs 10,000 Bitcoins. After several days, no one gave him a positive reply. It was not until May 22 that someone finally accepted his proposal.

By the way, someone left a comment below and suggested that he could go directly to the exchange and exchange these Bitcoins for US$41 (approximately NT$1,200), which he could then use to buy pizza.

Everyone knows the next story.

Since then, the value of Bitcoin has continued to rise, and one Bitcoin is now equivalent to approximately NT$830,000. In other words, if Hannix sold the Bitcoins he exchanged for pizza when Bitcoin reached its all-time high price of US$68,990 (approximately NT$2.1 million), he would have made approximately US$690 million (approximately NT$2.1 million). is NT$20.7 billion).

The two Papa John's pizzas he sold originally cost about $15 each. In other words, the Bitcoins he got in exchange for two slices of pizza were enough for him to buy 46 million of the same pizza now!

Because of this very interesting historical event, the global cryptocurrency community gathers together on May 22 every year to celebrate the first physical Bitcoin transaction in history, and to chat about this transaction while eating pizza. "Ten billion worth" pizza deal.

Why do you love Bitcoin so much? Iron fans reveal the secret themselves

Since the birth of Bitcoin, even though various blockchains and applications have emerged, there are still many die-hard enthusiasts with "Bitcoin belief" who use different methods to make the Bitcoin blockchain become better. Why do you love Bitcoin so much? "Web3+" interviewed two Bitcoin believers to reveal the thoughts in their minds.

Iron fan one: PTT digital currency board moderator DarkerDuck

Q: When did you first get involved with Bitcoin/cryptocurrency?

Around 2011, I was studying at the Institute of Information Technology. While studying cloud computing and distributed computing, I discovered that the Bitcoin mining consensus algorithm is a very innovative and novel decentralized architecture. At that time, I quickly read Satoshi Nakamoto’s white paper and went to the Bitcoin forum bitcointalk.org to learn more about the concept and operation of Bitcoin, an electronic cash.

I later also tried to use CPU and GPU for mining, and used Bitcoin Core (Bitcoin-Qt) to test transactions. It turned out that this concept of electronic cash was completely feasible, which also triggered my strong interest in blockchain technology. interest.

Q: Why do you like/believe in Bitcoin?

What I believe in is Satoshi Nakamoto’s philosophy, which is a decentralized, censorship-resistant payment system that can reduce transaction costs and increase transaction efficiency, and ultimately achieve an all-devouring financial flow Internet. So in fact, what I currently agree with is the development direction of "Bitcoin Cash" because it is most in line with Satoshi Nakamoto's original philosophy.

In the early days of my introduction to Bitcoin, its main goal was to become a currency that could be used daily by people around the world. This can be said to be something that is taken for granted by the Bitcoin community. When Bitcoin gradually begins to gather network effects and reaches critical mass, it will be like the previous ChatGPT trend and can be easily used by hundreds of millions of people around the world in a very short period of time and become a part of daily life.

The advantages of Bitcoin's native design in UTXO architecture can easily expand its capacity to serve people around the world. To achieve the ultimate goal of only one financial blockchain and the only financial Internet in the world. Because the Internet doesn't need to reinvent the second one.

Q: What are your thoughts on the current BRC-20 with its numerous inscriptions?

In fact, as early as 2013, Bitcoin, Mastercoin and other token protocols have used the "OP_return" field of Bitcoin transactions to record token issuance. Even in 2014, the counterparty protocol developed in Bitcoin Smart contract platform on the currency blockchain. Not to mention that the stablecoin USDT was originally issued on Bitcoin’s omni protocol.

So, issuing tokens on Bitcoin is really nothing new.

The important thing is how to make these tokens practical and practical, rather than just speculation. Like the current BRC-20, the shortcomings may be much greater than the previously mentioned Mastercoin and omni protocols. And if it really wants to be implemented, Bitcoin must also have the processing capacity to support the TPS traffic (Transaction per second, which refers to the amount of transaction messages it can process per second, or how many block verification messages it can mine) of these many tokens.

Q: How do you see the future of Bitcoin?

Regarding the future of Bitcoin, I think the most important thing is its popularization so that it can be integrated with the real economy. We need more people to start accepting and using Bitcoin, then the price of Bitcoin will be supported by the real economy. In the long run, the price of Bitcoin must reduce the element of speculation and rely on long-term real economic growth as the fundamentals, so that the price can follow long-term growth.

The operating logic of Bitcoin is originally based on the value generated by a large number of global transactions, as a support and inducement for security. More merchants and consumers must accept it and allow it to truly become a universal electronic cash before Bitcoin can achieve the ultimate goal of Satoshi Nakamoto's white paper.

Iron Fan 2: Nutshell Lawyer Lin Hongyu

Q: When did you first get involved with Bitcoin/cryptocurrency?

I started working with cryptocurrencies in 2017. I am quite special. I first got to know Ethereum and then went back to get to know Bitcoin.

At that time, I discovered that the world was so huge and there were such new channels for raising funds. At that time, I felt that Initial Coin Offering (ICO) and Ethereum were the best. Then slowly looking back, I discovered the difference between Bitcoin and Ethereum, and that Bitcoin may be the most promising. It may become an international currency.

Q: Why do you like/believe in Bitcoin?

Of course, after I started studying Bitcoin, I also studied Satoshi Nakamoto and his past research. But I think that liking Bitcoin, or believing in Bitcoin, is a comparative result.

If we say that "like" is a kind of emotion, then I think Bitcoin is different from other cryptocurrencies. After using "rational" comparison, we can get similar results.

As for why I like or believe in Bitcoin. First of all, because Bitcoin is relatively difficult to understand, it will not change or undergo major changes, making you suddenly realize that it is a new thing. Therefore, Bitcoin is now an old antique to our circle.

However, Old Antique is as good as Antique. It has a very good token economic design and a very good supply limit. It is also because he cannot change it, so that such an old antique can continue to be used without being changed. Even after quite some time, classics like this still work great.

Q: What are your thoughts on the current BRC-20 with its numerous inscriptions?

BRC-20 and inscriptions both come from the Ordinals protocol. The technical essence of this protocol is to allow the first layer of Bitcoin's network to record transaction serial numbers and on-chain records. To put it simply, let the Bitcoin transaction records record these NFTs or tokens. But I don't think there's a clear winner yet. We look forward to NFT being issued on a safer and better blockchain, but currently from BRC-20 and inscriptions, I have not seen this trend.

Although, BRC20 and inscription have just started and are still in a very early stage of exploration. However, if it were me, I would also want to send huge and expensive assets to Bitcoin, or at least have a certain connection with Bitcoin to take advantage of the stability and security of Bitcoin.

Indeed, Bitcoin will become slower or more expensive because too many people use it, and when this happens, the first ones to be happy are definitely the miners. But whether it is BRC20 or inscription, the "satoshi" transaction using Bitcoin is recorded in the annotation. So frankly speaking, I don’t think this model is suitable for tokens or inscriptions, but at least in terms of direction, these two forms recognize the Bitcoin network and Satoshi Nakamoto’s payment system architecture and system. I don’t think it will Change or deviate from Satoshi Nakamoto’s philosophy.

Q: How do you see the future of Bitcoin?

I think Bitcoin will be a very exciting melee in the next four years. First of all, Bitcoin’s four-year halving cycle is coming, and we predict that there may be another wave of market fluctuations next year.

Then there is Bitcoin itself, which is becoming more and more diverse in application. In the future, more countries will begin to consider whether Bitcoin is suitable as a legal currency. Especially in situations where inflation is high, countries are printing money, and the hegemony of the US dollar is being questioned, everyone will want to find a more neutral or alternative solution.

It may not necessarily completely replace the U.S. dollar, but it will at least begin to consider such an option, or to combat these risk hedging and risk targets. Bitcoin will definitely be brought up all the time. Including El Salvador, our association is also arranging a visit to find out how effective their Bitcoin legal tender policy is and is it worth emulating by other countries?

Other tracks and new applications that were originally played on Ethereum will also want to move to Bitcoin in the future, including the BRC20 we just mentioned, or it may be other token standards, or Bitcoin NFT, or even Stablecoins, etc.

I also talked with the chief technical officer of stablecoin issuer Circle before that when the new Lightning Network protocol is updated in the future, there will be more stability in the future, and US dollar stablecoins may also be issued on the Bitcoin Lightning Network. All in all, I think Bitcoin will be a very exciting experience in the future.