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Bitcoin Pizza Day Turns 15: How 10,000 BTC Could Have Bought Private Islands, Manhattan Penthouses And Some Of The World's Most Extravagant Luxuries Today

Bitcoin Pizza Day Turns 15: How 10,000 BTC Could Have Bought Private Islands, Manhattan Penthouses And Some Of The World's Most Extravagant Luxuries Today

Yahoo24-05-2025

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Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) Pizza Day is here again, reminding us of the first commercial use of the prized digital currency. The event, celebrated each year on May 22, has become immortalized and serves as an important reminder of the cryptocurrency's humble beginnings.
What happened: In 2010, Florida-based software developer Laszlo Hanyecz accidentally gave the cryptocurrency world a date to remember when he paid 10,000 BTC (yes, you heard that right) for two Papa John's pizzas.
Hanyecz said on a Bitcoin forum that he 'successfully traded' 10,000 Bitcoins for two pizzas.
Trending: — no wallets, just price speculation and free paper trading to practice different strategies.
According to the conversation on the forum, 1 Bitcoin was worth $0.0041 on the historical day, taking the total purchase amount to $41.
Fast forward to 2025, and the same stash is worth $1.10 billion, based on a per-unit price of $110,982.80, making the pizzas the most expensive ever.
What if Hanyecz had held onto his coins and instead used fiat currency to satisfy his pizza craving?
Well, he could have purchased a private island. And not just one, but several. For context, the Big Darby Island in the Bahamas was recently sold for $40 million.
But he'd still have plenty left. So he might as well consider buying a penthouse in the Manhattan neighborhood of New York.Manhattan penthouses are exceptionally expensive. Prices range from around $2 million to over $48 million, with some reaching upwards of $135 million.
Hanyecz could have also chosen to fund a space tourism trip for dozens of people (including me). SpaceX reportedly charged around $55 million per seat for flights to the International Space Station, according to a New York Times report.
While we don't know if Hanyecz is an art aficionado, he might have used some of his fortune to outbid at some of the world's most prestigious art auctions.
The most expensive artwork ever sold at auction was Leonardo da Vinci's 'Salvator Mundi,' which fetched $450 million at Christie's in New York in 2017.
Well, demands are boundless and luxuries plentiful. So, even a billion dollars might not be enough.
But one thing is certain—the legend of those two pizzas will keep reminding the cryptocurrency community about the importance of small beginnings.
Did you order your pies?
Read Next:
New to crypto? Get up to $400 in rewards for successfully completing short educational courses and making your first qualifying trade on Coinbase.
A must-have for all crypto enthusiasts: Sign up for the Gemini Credit Card today and earn rewards on Bitcoin Ether, or 60+ other tokens, with every purchase.
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This article Bitcoin Pizza Day Turns 15: How 10,000 BTC Could Have Bought Private Islands, Manhattan Penthouses And Some Of The World's Most Extravagant Luxuries Today originally appeared on Benzinga.com

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Germany's straight-talking new leader is meeting with Trump. Here's why it matters
Germany's straight-talking new leader is meeting with Trump. Here's why it matters

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Friedrich Merz, the newly inaugurated German chancellor, will take a seat in the Oval Office on Thursday for his first in-person meeting with US President Donald Trump. The meeting comes as a series of high-stakes international issues once again come to the fore. Trump has issued another round of warnings to the European Union on tariffs; the war in Ukraine appears no closer to ending; and pressure is mounting on Israel over the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza. Since taking office, Merz has been on a tour of European capitals, meeting with France's Emmanuel Macron, Britain's Keiier Starmer and Poland's Donald Tusk – before they all appeared in Kyiv alongside Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky in a show of European unity. The one major omission has been a meeting with Trump. While there have been phone calls between the two, the handshake accompanied by the frantic clicks of camera shutters will mark the start of the new German-US relationship. 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He's transparent. He's direct. And I would imagine that that is something which Donald Trump will hopefully learn to appreciate.' That directness, particularly as regards Europe's relationship with the US, has already raised eyebrows in some quarters. In the minutes after Merz's center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its sister party won the largest share of the vote on February 23, making him the likely next chancellor, he said, 'the utmost priority is strengthening Europe as quickly as possible, so that we achieve independence from the US step-by-step.' He added that the Trump administration 'doesn't care much about the fate of Europe.' Merz also had a few other choice words for the US in the days following the election. 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