Skalds of Bitcoin Twitter has sung of the historic moment, the “first purchase of the real world” with Bitcoin, and Pundits has etched the story of the Internet’s memory with headlines about the notorious Bitcoin pizza purchase, now expensive appreciated for more than $ 1 billion.
But what if I told you Hanyecz spent almost 10 times more bitcoin after the historic purchase? And what if I told you that Hanyecz might be doing it as apparently bot for his much more impact contribution to Bitcoin in its uncertain infant?
He was a bitcoin technical pioneer
Penumbra from Hanyecz’s Pizza Day purchase has overshadowed its two sperm contributions to Bitcoin’s early technical development.
This post originally appeared on Blockspace Media, where Colin Harper is editor -in -chief.
The first of these came on April 19, 2010, just days after Hanyecz registered for Bitcointalk, a forum created by Satoshi Nakamoto, which was (and still is) a watering hole for Bitcoin’s Techie Intelligentsia. Hanyecz created the first macOS client for Bitcoin Core, the original and still dominant software implementation to the nodes that support the Bitcoin network.
Satoshi originally coded Bitcoin for Windows and Linux, but Hanyecz’s Innovation also allowed macOs devices to run the software. His contribution laid the basis for all macOS-enabled Bitcoin cartoons and applications that would follow it.
But no doubt bigger than this was Hanyecz’s discovery that he could miner Bitcoin with his computer’s graphics card (GPU). Until this time, early adoptes their computer treatment devices (CPUs) to my Bitcoin, and since GPUs are size orders that are more powerful than CPUs for the task, this innovation Bitcoin -mining propelled much faster than Satoshi expected.
“Updated Mac OS X Binary … it will use your GPU to generate Bitcoins. This works really well if you have a good GPU like an NVIDIA 8800 or something like that,” Hanyecz wrote in a 10th May 2010 Bitcointalk Post.
The discovery ignited Bitcoin’s first digital gold rush. Bitcoin’s total hash rate exploded upwards by 130,000% by the end of the year, and for the first time Bitcoin mining workers began to construct small scale mining. These setups together together in basements and ceilings, garages and sheds-were the prototypes for the industrial Bitcoin mining farms that dominate the Bitcoin network today.
The pizza was fine
Hanyecz’s invention was so consequence that it gave him a virtual fall from Satoshi Nakamoto himself. And it is possible that the conversation that followed may have inspired Hanyecz’s famous pizza day purchase.
“A big attraction to new users is that anyone with a computer can generate some free coins,” Satoshi wrote to Hanyecz. “GPUs would limit the incentive to only those with advanced GPU hardware. It is inevitable that GPU-calculated clusters will eventually pig all the generated coins, but I will not speed up that day.”
In an interview from 2019 to the Bitcoin magazine, Hanyecz told me he “stopped advertising [GPU mining] After that. “
“I was like,” man, I want to look up your project. Sorry, guy. “He was worried that some people might be discouraged because they can’t take advantage of a block with a CPU,” Hanyecz said.
Maybe this conversation spurred Hanyecz to offer 10,000 BTC to two big Papa Johns Pizzas on the fateful day of May 15 years ago. In fact, he made the offer more than once. During the 2019 interview, Hanyecz told me he spent nearly 100,000 BTC in the year that followed.
“I used [all my bitcoin] On pizza a long time ago, ”Hanyecz wrote in a Bitcointalk post in February 2014.” Apart from a little bit of shift to single -digit, I spent everything I extracted. As you all know, the difficulty in adapting to hashing is rising, so in the end, mining was not worth it to me. “
If he looks at a Bitcoin address Hanyecz, which was performed on his first Bitcointalk post, received Hanyecz and used 81,432 BTC from this address from April to November 2010. This amount would be worth just over $ 8.6 billion today.
Laszlo Hanyecz’s Wallet 2010 Balance History | Source: Mempool.Space
There is no way to verify whether Hanyecz spent all this on pizza, other items, or whether he simply gave Bitcoin away to new Bitcointalk members, a common practice back then when Bitcoin was close to worthless. But he mentioned in his original thread to the pizza purchase that it was “an open offer”, even though he redirected this in August and said, “I can’t really afford to continue doing it as I can’t generate thousands of coins a day more. Thanks to everyone who has already bought me pizza.”
The original purchase, so much less the recurring those who apparently took place after, would be enough to keep any sensible person awake at night when Bitcoin marches over $ 100,000. But at least in the 2019 stomach stomach stomach with good humor. When he saw it, he committed culinary alchemy and transferred his electricity and computing power to a cheap dinner. He did not know that Bitcoin would command the price it is doing today, so the transaction was a victory in his book.
“A trade happens because both parties think they are getting a good deal,” he said. “I felt I was beating the internet, getting free food. I was like,” man, I got these GPUs tied together, now I have to twice as quickly. I just need to eat free food; I should never buy food again … ”
“I mean, I coded this thing and extracted Bitcoin and I felt I won the internet that day. I got pizza to contribute to an open source project. Usually hobbies are a time wash and money washing, and in this case my hobby bought me dinner.”
