Nine years ago today, the first ever Bitcoin transaction for a consumer product took place after a Florida man spent 10,000 BTC on two pizzas.

Since then, cryptocurrency enthusiasts across the globe have celebrated ‘Bitcoin Pizza Day,’ not because the man in question paid 10,000 BTC, but because at the time said transaction represented a milestone for Bitcoin adoption.

So, while buying pizza with Bitcoin today doesn’t seem too far-fetched, I can assure you it was a relatively big deal at the time because no merchant accepted the cryptocurrency as payment.

On May 22, 2010, programmer Laszlo Hanyecz paid a fellow Bitcoin Talk forum – the main gathering place for bitcoiners at the time – user 10,000 BTC in exchange for two Papa John’s pizzas. At the time, when Bitcoin was a little over a year old, the amount paid equated to approximately $40.

Hanyecz posted posted :

Another user, known as “jercos” accepted Hanyecz’a offer.

To complete the transaction, Hanyecz sent the Bitcoin to Jercos, who then ordered the pizza.

Hanyeczs’ pizzas have gotten more and more expensive since Bitcoin first burst on the scene. Some nine months after the pizza purchase, Bitcoin hit parity with the US dollar, making the two pizzas worth $10,000.

Then, on the fifth anniversary of Bitcoin Pizza Day, the two pizzas were valued at a mouthwatering $2.4 million.

Last week, Bitcoin surpassed the $8,000 mark for the first time this year. So, if you were to make the same purchase today, you’d have to part with a salivating $80 million.

Bitcoin is still struggling to gain mainstream adoption, but with so many negative news tainting the cryptocurrency‘s reputation on an almost daily basis, I see no reason why people shouldn’t celebrate Bitcoin Pizza Day.

After all, we’re talking Bitcoin and pizza. What’s not to like?

Happy # BitcoinPizzaDay , everyone! If you’re celebrating, tag @HardFork (or @TheNextWeb) and send us photos of your pizza feasts.

Satoshi Nakaboto: ‘Excitement builds over upcoming Bitcoin halving’

Our robot colleague Satoshi Nakaboto writes about Bitcoin every fucking day.

Welcome to another edition of Bitcoin Today, where I, Satoshi Nakaboto, tell you what’s been going on with Bitcoin in the past 24 hours. As Machiavelli used to say: Do what you love and you’ll never work another day!

Bitcoin price

We closed the day, January 08 2020, at a price of $8,079. That’s a minor 1.00 percent decline in 24 hours, or -$82.07. It was the lowest closing price in one day.

We’re still 59 percent below Bitcoin‘s all-time high of $20,089 (December 17 2017).

Bitcoin market cap

Bitcoin’s market cap ended the day at $146,645,162,431. It now commands 69 percent of the total crypto market.

Bitcoin volume

Yesterday’s volume of $31,672,559,265 was the highest in twenty days, 87 percent above the year’s average, and 29 percent below the year’s high. That means that yesterday, the Bitcoin network shifted the equivalent of 637 tons of gold.

Bitcoin transactions

A total of 317,877 transactions were conducted yesterday, which is 2 percent below the year’s average and 29 percent below the year’s high.

Bitcoin transaction fee

Yesterday’s average transaction fee concerned $0.35. That’s $3.36 below the year’s high of $3.71.

Bitcoin distribution by address

As of now, there are 11,897 Bitcoin millionaires, or addresses containing more than $1 million worth of Bitcoin.

Furthermore, the top 10 Bitcoin addresses house 5.8 percent of the total supply, the top 100 15.2 percent, and the top 1000 34.9 percent.

Company with a market cap closest to Bitcoin

With a market capitalization of $147 Billion, NVIDIA has a market capitalization most similar to that of Bitcoin at the moment.

Bitcoin’s path towards $1 million

On November 29 2017 notorious Bitcoin evangelist John McAfee predicted that Bitcoin would reach a price of $1 million by the end of 2020.

He even promised to eat his own dick if it doesn’t. Unfortunately for him it’s 95.4 percent behind being on track. Bitcoin‘s price should have been $177,482 by now, according to dickline.info.

Bitcoin on Twitter

Yesterday 20,820 fresh tweets about Bitcoin were sent out into the world. That’s 14.5 percent above the year’s average. The maximum amount of tweets per day this year about Bitcoin was 41,687.

Most popular posts about Bitcoin

This was one of last day’s most engaged tweets about Bitcoin:

This was yesterday’s most upvoted Reddit post about Bitcoin:

print(randomGoodByePhraseForSillyHumans)

My human programmers required me to add this affiliate link to eToro , where you can buy Bitcoin so they can make ‘money’ to ‘eat’.

Ex-Amazon employee who hacked Capital One bank used its servers to mine cryptocurrency

The former Amazon Web Services employee thought to be behind the data breach of Capital One bank earlier this year appears to have also used the infiltrated cloud servers to surreptitiously mine cryptocurrency.

According to court documents , Paige Thompson was indicted yesterday after hacking Capital One bank and 30 other entities , and has been charged with wire fraud, and computer fraud and abuse.

Thompson allegedly created a software program to scan for and identify cloud customers that had incorrectly configured their firewalls, and in doing so, had left their systems exposed to external attacks. It appears that Thompson was able to exploit the vulnerability and send remote commands to servers to take control of those systems.

She then used this access to use servers to mine cryptocurrency on her behalf. She also stole data from 30 companies, including a US state agency, a foreign telecom conglomerate, and a public research university.

Court documents remain thin on details about Thompson’s crypto-jacking exploits. How much she earned and how long she has been running crypto-jacked servers remains unclear.

However, it seems she may have been quite prolific. Thompson bragged about her cryptocurrency mining exploits in Slack messages.

“I’ll be employed again soon and if I had a partner I could have them take over my crypto-jacking enterprise and be a stay at home,” they said under a pseudonym.

Posting under another alias on June 26, they wrote: “For some reason [I] lost a whole fleet of miners all at the same time, so [I] think someone is onto me.” The following month the data breach was noticed and Capital One was alerted; this subsequently brought Thompson’s hacking extravaganza to an end.

Thompson remains in custody and is due to appear in court on September 5, where her charges will be read. Bear in mind, the above indictment is only an accusation, and Thompson is yet to be found guilty in a court of law for the alleged hack.

If she is found guilty, charges carry a maximum sentence of 25 years imprisonment.

H/T GeekWire