Many people know about Bitcoin Pizza Day, celebrated on May 22nd, in honor of the first purchase of a product with bitcoin, when on May 18, 2010, a guy from Florida named Laszlo Hanyecz put out a call, saying he wanted pizza and would pay 10,000 bitcoins; he waited four days before finally finding someone who would buy him that very pizza in exchange for bitcoins.
And on February 24th, Lightning Pizza Day is celebrated. On February 24, 2018, the same Laszlo Hanyecz bought pizza again, using the then-recently launched Lightning Network—a second-layer protocol on top of the Bitcoin blockchain. This time, the price of two pizzas was only 649,000 satoshis, which is 0.00649 bitcoin. At today’s prices, that is approximately 330 dollars. Moreover, he handled the purchase significantly faster; there was no long wait for a seller.
He described the technical details on a lightning developer resource, and the text shows how immature the technology was at the time. Currently, using Lightning is still far from convenient, but there has nonetheless been substantial progress.
How did I find out about all this? There is a convenient custodial lightning wallet on Telegram @lntxbot, equipped with many third-party services. In particular, you can subscribe to a mailing list of paid advertisements there. Send the bot the command /sats4ads on 15 and you will occasionally receive messages from the bot with very short ads and a claim button. By clicking the button, you receive a reward of 15 millisatoshis per character (this is very little, but you can play with the price—you can receive more expensive ads, but in smaller quantities). And so, today a mailing arrived where I was congratulated on the holiday, told this whole story, and offered cashback in satoshis for every pizza purchased. Unfortunately, the offer did not apply to the Russian Federation, so the bot’s ad targeting isn’t great.
On the other hand, today I received another offer regarding ad placement. And since it’s such a day, I requested payment in Lightning: 10,000 satoshis—exactly one hundred million times less than what the pizza cost in May 2010.
So, I am happy to post an announcement for a lecture on cryptocurrencies, which will take place this coming Saturday in Yekaterinburg. I hope there are residents of this city among my readers who are not yet aware, and that the lecturer’s advertising budget did not go to waste. Bring your acquaintances to the lecture as well, if, of course, you wish them well, because mastering the use of bitcoins is definitely a good thing. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be trying to fine us and tax us for it.
As for the announcement itself, it will be in the next post, to separate it somehow from the prolonged preamble.