Bitcoin Pizza – The First Trade on a New Currency

Today is the 10^th anniversary of the first time Bitcoin was used to buy anything. This occurred when a Florida Man, Laszlo Hanyecz brought two large pizzas for 10,000 BTC. With the price of Bitcoin at approximately $9,500 the time of this post, those two pizzas would be worth about $95 million in today’s money. This will go down in history easily as the world’s most expensive pizza of all time.

The reason why this transaction was important, was for the over the year of it’s existence, no one really knew if Bitcoin would become a currency. It existed as a theoretical concept only. Someone had to make the first transaction in order to pave the way for merchant adaptation. By showing the transaction could happen in a public way, help others begin to realize the true value of Bitcoin.

Because this was a very public transaction, we have very good documentation on the transaction. One can view the the forum post that inspired it here: Bitcoin for Pizza. This transaction didn’t work like a normal transaction. He first had to find someone who accepted Bitcoin and then convince them to actually buy him the Pizza with regular money. Because of the nature of the transaction he had to give out the city lived in and thus we actually have enough information to cast a proper chart in which we can interpret House placements.

I found the time looking at the transaction on block 57035 on the Bitcoin blockchain. Using the location as Jacksonville Florida, we get the chart below. The immediate thing about this this chart is that the Sun is directly on the Midheaven. This is a public transaction, and therefore the Sun is there.

Another interesting thing about this chart is that the Mercury, the ascendant ruler is in the 9^th House. Mercury as I theorized here represents individual Bitcoin transactions. In this case that is very valid. In order pay for the pizzas with cash, a man in England (9^th House/foreign country) payed by credit card over the phone.

Most of the rest of the planets in the chart form squares and oppositions to one another. There is a a Moon Saturn conjunction at the cusp of the 2^nd House opposing a Jupiter Uranus conjunction at the cusp of the 8^th House. This is squared, out of sign, by Venus in the 11^th House opposing a Ceres Pluto conjunction in 5^th House.

The Moon Saturn conjunction on the cusp of the 2^nd House indicates the public demonstration of Bitcoin a possession (2^nd House) being used to obtain another possession, through using someone else resources in an unusual way. Jupiter is the ruler of the 8^th House and it is conjunction Uranus.

The Venus opposing Ceres and Pluto shows how to creatively used the power decentralization (Ceres + Pluto) to form a consensus (Venus) with your friends to accept Bitcoin as a money. And this is how many early Bitcoin transactions were complete for the next few years. I think this charts shows how dynamic squares and oppositions can be in a chart. Very people would expect this is a successful transaction chart, but it is.

Looking at the comparison to the Bitcoin Genesis chart, one can easily see several major aspects. There is a trine between the Transaction Venus and Genesis Venus, a trine between the Tranaction Sun and the Genesis Mercury, and trine between the Transaction Mercury, and Genesis Mars, and a opposition between the Transaction Mars and the Genesis Neptune. However what is fascinating about the time is the Nodal connections between the charts.

The Transaction North Node is conjunct the Genesis Sun, and the Transaction Mercury is the at the square the Genesis Nodes. With the Transaction North Node conjunct the Genesis Sun one almost gets a sense of what future holds for Bitcoin, that is is being the digital gold standard. Another it may take another complete Nodal cycle to fully realize that.

With the Transaction Mercury square the Genesis Nodes, I almost want to think of this an do or die moment for Bitcoin. At this point Bitcoin existed for over an year, but no one used in any meaning full way. At some point a person had to choose to start using it as a currency or just think discard the program as another failed attempt at digital money, of which there are several attempts to the dating all the way back to in the early 1990s.

And so a choice was made 10 years ago that changed the economy forever. So take take some time and have a pizza for dinner. There are some pizza places that accept cryptocurrency, but one doesn’t have to spend Bitcoin to get a good pizza.