

Pizza for bitcoins? [2010] - sgpl
https://bitcointalk.org/?topic=137.0

======
gabemart
It's worth bearing in mind that bitcoin might never have reached the position
it now holds if early adopters had not spent their coins as freely as they
did.

~~~
bradleysmith
Had heard about this story some time last year, this was the conclusion
quickly reached at my office. The amount of effect his purchase had on the
early adoption of bitcoin is practically immeasurable.

Any pain he feels over perceived 'opportunity loss' is effectively him 'taking
one for the team', with the team being the bitcoin community. As mentioned
elsewhere, I'm sure he did fine having mined early.

------
idoco
BTW this is the pizza he bought-
[http://www.heliacal.net/~solar/bitcoin/pizza/](http://www.heliacal.net/~solar/bitcoin/pizza/)

I hope that at least it was good :) (For $10M)

~~~
sneak
It didn't cost $10M.

I was in those IRC channels back then and you could buy thousands of bitcoins
for a few bucks. There were only like 200 of us who even knew what they were
or valued them in any way.

~~~
3pt14159
Man that is crazy. I got in at $1-$10 a coin and _I 'm_ worried about it
because I talked about it so much back then, but for you guys it must be
insane.

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manuelflara
He was offering 10,000 BTC for two large pizzas. At today's exchange rates
that's close to $10 million. I didn't bother to read the whole thread, but if
he did eventually buy them, I hope they were at least delicious.

~~~
shawabawa3
He did buy them, and although a lot of people probably think he's an idiot for
it, bear in mind he is most likely a multimillionaire if not a billionaire by
now.

~~~
adventured
He's not even remotely close to being a billionaire, a pretty hefty
exaggeration. That would require that he mined nearly 10% of all bitcoins.

He talks about basically having 'thrown away' 40,000+ bitcoins that were easy
to mine initially before he stopped and began holding onto what he was mining.
It's more likely he's in the $10m to $50m range, assuming he didn't liquidate
early into bitcoin's rise.

~~~
shawabawa3
> He's not even remotely close to being a billionaire, a pretty hefty
> exaggeration. That would require that he mined nearly 10% of all bitcoins.

My bad, sometimes I forget just how big a billion is

------
Tarang
> So nobody wants to buy me pizza? Is the bitcoin amount I'm offering too low?

Got to laugh seeing this today.

~~~
atmosx
Sure today yes, but you have to put that into context.

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nodata
So how do these very large bitcoin holders cash out now? Is there somebody
that provides a service to slow sell them?

~~~
gibybo
You can set a limit order on your favorite exchange. It will sit there and
sell them off for the price you specify as people are willing to buy them. Of
course, if anyone is selling them cheaper than you, yours won't sell until
theirs are gone.

Alternatively you can just place a market order a few times per day for a
week. It's more work, but we're really only talking about ~1 minute of work
per $200k or so. MtGox handles more than $10M in Bitcoin sales per day and
they represent a minority of all exchange volume.

~~~
dcc1
The problem is getting paid by Mt Gox in dollars, euro etc as many horror
stories exist of people not being paid for months or ever

Other exchanges would also have similar issues, and would hit you with all
sorts of antimoneylaundering questions if you try to withdraw too much

~~~
gibybo
Fair enough, but Bitstamp is also doing close to $10M/day. You are probably
right about the AML hurdle, but that is orthogonal to needing a service to
sell them off slowly for you.

~~~
dcc1
See here for an example questions they ask personal customers trying too
withdraw above certain limit (not sure what it is exactly or what criteria is
used to trigger this)

[https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=356026.msg3835542#ms...](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=356026.msg3835542#msg3835542)

As KYC questionnaire a company has to answer here is alot longer than above, I
am not sure if allowed to post it, but it is very thorough

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giarc
I didn't read the rest of the forum posts, but has there been any update from
either party?

~~~
instoftech
Yes. I believe the poster completed at least one transaction and this is the
famous "pizza story" in the Bitcoin world.

~~~
giarc
I should have elaborated a bit. I meant has the person that received the
bitcoins providing updates recently (ie. Spending my millions on a private
island in the Caribbean).

