Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoin is one of the wonders of modern civilization virtual currency that has become a hot topic of discussion all over the world. If you read the history of the Bitcoin, many amazing stories emerge which are presented in front of you in a small scale. Not many people knew about the importance of Bitcoin when it would later become the most talked about topic in the world. Especially if the following few people knew the importance of Bitcoin and its value would increase so much in the future, maybe they would not have created such an event.

Martti Malmi
In October 2009, Finnish computer scientist Martti Malmi sold 5050 Bitcoins at a rate of just $0.00099/BTC, which was the record for the lowest price in Bitcoin history. But this was the first recorded sale of Bitcoin through PayPal.

Laszlo Hanycez
Laszlo Hanycez This guy made a new history of selling bitcoins. He was the first to make history by making the first product purchase with Bitcoin. On May 22, 2010, he made history by selling his 10,000 Bitcoins for just two pizzas. Because of its history, May 22nd is celebrated every year as Bitcoin Pizza Day.

Theymos/Bitcoin Forum Admin
The last person to record a Bitcoin sale was their well-known Bitcoin forum admin, Theymos, on February 20, 2010, who sold 160 Bitcoins at a rate of $0.003/BTC for just 48 cents, the lowest Bitcoin sale in history.

Bitcoin price history (https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/cryptocurrency/bitcoin-price-history/)

Martti Malmi aka Sirius (http://)
Laszlo Hanyecz aka laszlo (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=143). He made a Bitcoin Pizza day. One person is less known, BitcoinFX (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=143) who engaged in that Pizza deal.
theymos (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=35). We all know about theymos.  :)

Laszlo first pizza buyer via bitcoin....
Pizza for bitcoins? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=137.msg1141#msg1141)

If I were to guess, it was far harder to be bullish on bitcoin back then knowing how little usage it had. It's easy to see how bad their decision was because we already know what happened to bitcoin's price. Hindsight is 20/20.

I think it's more of the early history of Bitcoin here. And there are a lot, throughout it young years and others have included a link.

Again, we really don't know what the future will bring and so there could be others there who had a ton of bitcoins early and then lost their access. Oh wait there was one guy, Man makes last-ditch effort to recover $280 million in bitcoin he accidentally threw out. (https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/15/uk-man-makes-last-ditch-effort-to-recover-lost-bitcoin-hard-drive.html)

And seeing this right now, for us, we should be happy to be given the chance to buy and HODL and see how our BTC investments will grow in the future.

I don't think it's an appropriate comparison between knowing the importance of Bitcoin and use it as a currency, because regardless how much the price of Bitcoin, it can be used as a currency as long as the other party accept it.

But not many people are understand about hodling I AM HODLING  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=375643.0), this guy know the importance of Bitcoin where it will be worth for high amount money in the future. I'm not saying people who spend Bitcoin when it's cheap is wrong, it's fine as long as they're not use all of their Bitcoin.

Yes, that is absolutely true, because if a coin is not traded, then that coin has no value in the market. Now if the trading volume of Bitcoin decreases i.e. becomes zero (assuming) then the value of Bitcoin in the market will become zero i.e. there will be no acceptance among users.

I wouldn't call it a bad decision actually. The usage of Bitcoin had to start somewhere. If transactions like the 10,000 Bitcoin for a pizza wouldn't have happened, what would the actual utility that people ascribe value to eventually have been? Now speaking for the individuals and the concrete amounts sold back then, it was a "bad" decision, yes. But in the end it was the major precondition for Bitcoin to get going. Someone had to make the first step in order to demonstrate to other people what this is all about and evoke some aha-effect. Bitcoin started to get a price. Those using it very early on realized that there are others accepting it. Selling those 10,000 Bitcoin in exchange for a pizza might have been the best decision of his lifetime because that was his aha-effect and he started to stock up like mad and put thousands and thousands into long-term cold storage.

It's quite unfortunate that I only know about Bitcoin pizza day and have never heard about any of the two just mentioned above because the truth about stuff like this is that history will always repeat itself as come next 15yrs from now, so will many people regret ever selling their Bitcoin at the current rate of $22k, when by then it's price might have gone 10x. Because the truth is that back then in 2010 people didn't believe in Bitcoin, and even if they did, nobody expected it could rise to such price it is today, if not I'm sure Sir "Theymos" would never have sold his Bitcoin.

Of course it wasn't — simply because for people to be able to buy bitcoin, someone needs to sell it to them. But yet people regard it as a bad decision simply because the price is far higher today.

If they did know about bitcoin future (By Time Traveling 2009-2023 today)
They could win..

Martti Malmi 5050 BTC
Today price $22300
=5050×22300
=$112.65M

Laszlo Hanycez 10000 BTC
=10000×22300
=$223M

Theymos 160 BTC
=160×22300
=$3.568M

However, if they had sold Bitcoin at its peak market of $69,000 in 2021, they would have received 3× more dollars than they do now.

False. Many of us have made sales transactions with bitcoin even though we know that in the future it could be worth a million dollars and even more. A currency that is not used is not a currency, and these events became famous and helped to gradually increase its use as a currency. Also, there are times when you want to spend now, not wait 10 years for the price to rise, the important thing is that you always save something, that is, if you have 10 bitcoins you can spend 1 today and with the other 9 you wait for the price to rise more. This without taking into account that over time you can get more bitcoins, for example by mining, which is what theymos did.

And who can forget the first Bitcoin faucet in history (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=183.0)? It gave away 5BTC per customer. It's totally for free. There's no task required whatsoever to be able claim it, although solving a captcha was later on added. Gavin Andresen (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=224) created freebitcoins.appspot.com so that people could try Bitcoin out. That was his way to spread Bitcoin. And he started with a stock of 1,100BTC. Donation was also accepted and many made contributions. Even the Bitcoin OG, BitcoinFX (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=30) donated 500BTC to that faucet. Accordingly, Gavin gave away almost 20,000BTC through that faucet, although I think that amount already included donations from supporters.

You can't compare the way Bitcoin was viewed in 2009 to the way it's currently been viewed in 2023, most of the people mentioned in Op knows so well about Bitcoin but due to the fact that it's adoption hasn't increased I guess that was why they sold or maybe for some other personal reason but I won't add money issue because they amount realized from those sales is nothing significant so I bet they didn't sell because they needed money or so.

Op, if it were to be you I bet you'd still sell just imagine you've been holding a coin for some time and all of a sudden the price rose from $0.000001 to $0.0004. like I have said before most of those people that were able to keep their coin till present day were those that forget they even had Bitcoin but later got their memory jogged when they came across a news or saw some article and then proceed to recovering his account.

Laszlo Hanycez
Laszlo Hanycez This guy made a new history of selling bitcoins. He was the first to make history by making the first product purchase with Bitcoin. On May 22, 2010, he made history by selling his 10,000 Bitcoins for just two pizzas. Because of its history, May 22nd is celebrated every year as Bitcoin Pizza Day.[/quote]

When I read about this guy I kept on laughing lol. It was so hilarious like what could have caused him to sell his 10000 ???  Bitcoin for two pizzas. Was it that he was so hungry or just didn't care anymore about his Bitcoin and wanted to get rid of them? Or he just wanted to have fun. Unfortunately he later regretted selling that Bitcoin back then which could have been worth  Rs 22,60,68,90,000 today.  I guess he just never taught of this before he made that decision.

If they can sell such an amount of bitcoin for a test, how much do they have left? That's the question to ask yourself when considering the above listed names as people who made mistakes. Practically the fun of selling bitcoin for few bucks made them realize the importance of bitcoin and they stacked more of it. For instance, in domain business, if I have a portfolio of 10 domain names and sell 1 cheaper, that doesn't mean the rest in the list won't bring profits. Trading requires exchange, despite your claims that its a mistake, traders still sell bitcoin till date. Now I can sell 0.009BTC for $200 but later bitcoin might get too high that people in the next generation would say I made a huge mistake for selling at that amount, adding that I would have been richer if I held, yet it doesn't me from becoming rich. So, its a recurring sales and it happened willingly, it shouldn't be seen as negligence of bitcoin value.

 Hmm. Hunger and he had a craving for pizza so he exchanged 10,000 units of a (at that time) unpopular asset for something he wanted - the pizza.

What do you mean anymore? Stop thinking of bitcoin in today's age and time. We are talking about the beginnings were it wasn't yet valuable. There was no "anymore" in those days.

I think he wrote somewhere on the forum that he never regretted the decision and at the time it made sense to him. If no one spends bitcoin today thinking the value will be much higher in the future, it would never end. No matter what price it reaches, people would say, not yet, let's wait a little bit more.

Ok maybe I didn't read that part and yes you are right if people dont spend their btc it will just keep piling and they will never get to use it thinking that it will much higher in the future.lol

But that is the thing, no one knows for sure what it will happen on the future and each one of us needs to take decisions based in our limited knowledge and sometimes we will make mistakes.

However those transactions are not mistakes, those transactions were made and at the time each one of them received a fair compensation for what bitcoin was worth, now many years later bitcoin is more valuable, but if any of those people had asked for their bitcoin to be bought at 69k you can be sure they would have been mocked by trying to do so.

Let's just be thankful to them that has spent first their bitcoins because only a very few people believed in it. Without their initiative of spending it and also thanks to the buyers and takers of their bitcoins because if it's not for all of them, there won't be any progress or there will be little progress at all. I've heard laszlo being interviewed and he never regrets what he has done with the bitcoins he used to purchase those pizzas. He has made history, they have made history and those actions they've done before, we're the ones who is enjoying its benefits today.

Such comparisons are illogical because they are an incorrect deduction of historical events. Perhaps it would have been useful if a historical account had been mentioned for the first 100 transactions or the 10 most famous transactions, but we all do not know whether that price was fair at that moment or not?

when one of us sold Bitcoin at a price of $8,000, it was a fair price at some point, but it is negligible today. The same thing is for those who regret not selling at 69,000, or those who are selling now may regret it when the price is $200,000.
And more comparisons.

To me I'll say it was the best decision they made at that moment, it could be that these transactions they made within those periods where part of the catalyst that made a boost to what we are enjoying today in higher value as bitcoin. The price of a gold sold at $100 some 40 years ago may be selling at $10k today, that doesn't mean that those that sold theirs 40years ago made a mistake or that they didn't know the value, what they did was just business at the very value it were.
Now today bitcoin is at $23k and many persons are selling theirs, if the price hits 100k in the next 15 years to come that doesnt mean tht those that sold theirs at 23k didn't know the importance. Based on the times and intervals it was the best value for each of them.

He didn't offer bitcoins for pizza because he was hungry and couldn't afford it the other way or because he didn't care about bitcoin and just wanted to dump it. Point was to show that bitcoin is real money and that you can live off it by buying an actual food




He did? I don't think I ever read an interview with him stating that. Thing is, if he didn't sepnd 10k bitcoin on pizza, he would have spent on something else or simply sell it for $, but this way he became an important part of bitcoin history

Yes it is true they sold their precious bitcoin for a pittance at the time but I think they are happy that they made history.

If it were not for these big men who believed in bitcoin and sold several hundred or thousands of bitcoins for cents, as well as those who bought pizza for ten thousand bitcoins, had it not been for all these men, bitcoin would not have reached what it is today.

I am sure, at that time they did not care that they were selling Bitcoin at a very low price or not, but all they cared about was that this new invention would work and spread all over the world.

There are few early believers who trusted bitcoin for what it was then even without having a strong believe of what it will become. I am sure they had their doubts about bitcoins at some point, but they managed to find a way to keep believing. These people have put their mark in history just as other members of this forum actively contributing to the sustenance and growth and continuity of this community. Martti Malmi, Laszlo Hanycez and Theymos just like satoshi will be very proud of what bitcoins has become.

Some people just realize it too late. Someone just didn't believe that bitcoin will go that high. It's always easiest to judge people from this perspective, but when you are at this moment, you can't predict for sure what technology will blow up.

They know how potential bitcoin is in the future but never know when it can become popular. They did that as a promotion for bitcoin and to show that bitcoin can be a means of payment other than fiat or other methods. And they are legends in the crypto world who will become part of bitcoin's early history.

If they could see into the future, I don't think they would have sold that many bitcoins then or even wouldn't have sold them and just kept them until recently. But they showed the world that bitcoin would grow fast and has proved so today. We have to continue what they started, which will make bitcoin even more popular in the coming days.

But maybe some people at that time still underestimate bitcoin's power and they dump bitcoin somewhere. And when the bitcoin price rises, they remember they already had bitcoins in their wallet. We may also remember how someone is willing to look for bitcoins among the mountains of garbage and willing to pay for the potential pollution.

OP, this isn't the first time you've brought this topic up.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5441239.msg61818700#msg61818700

 Why do you care? Tell me, what were you doing a few years ago when Bitcoin appeared? Were you born smart? Knowing that one day you will invest in bitcoin, and it will definitely make you a millionaire. But yeah, you didn't know that, did you? Have you ever lost anything? Do you always know when there will be a natural disaster in your area, and are you always wise? But why do you demand that other people be all-seeing?
Actually, this and the previous topic should be left unanswered. They are directly aimed at the people you write about. But you act like a "sage", calling the people who sold bitcoin for next to nothing stupid.
But if you're so smart, why are you so poor? ;D

If it were you, I can assure you that you would also sell bitcoin at that time because we all know that no one can predict the future. Those who have sold bitcoin in the past have no regrets as long as they have made a profit on it or they are happy to sell it. And I want to ask you, what is the importance of bitcoin?

I have never heard about this and I am now curious to know what happened, why theymos sold at low?

• He was not certain if bitcoin will rise in the future
• He needed money, so he had to sell ;D
• He wanted to make history as someone who sold the lowest Bitcoin price

The number 3 option above is hilariousandco, what problems could 48 cents would have solved then? Nothing I guess, or there was no inflation then and as such the purchasing power of 48 cents was high.

Whatever the reason they sell Bitcoin at a low price, it's because of the situation at that time Bitcoin is not yet famous, and they sacrifice the assets they have to make Bitcoin popular and have high prices at this time. Sometimes, in the world of technology, sacrifice is also needed to make it develop. However, they are legends, if people find out about the history of Bitcoin, then history will bring them to their story. I really appreciate them.

It's easy to judge in hindsight, but of course it was hardly realistic to imagine in the early years of Bitcoin that it would cost thousands, tens of thousands of dollars. And I'm confident many of us had our own moments of doubt at whichever point we joined the market, thinking that the price is already really high (to me, it was when Bitcoin was worth hundreds of dollars). AFAIK, Laszlo said he didn't regret the pizza deal, maybe the other two don't regret it either. After all, these are amazing stories that show how far we've come, how far Bitcoin came. I don't think they should cause regret.

You are right, the pioneers at that time, what they cared about proving to the world that Bitcoin works and is valuable. Another thing is that no one can predict the future and I'm sure that even Satoshi cannot think that Bitcoin will get today. Bitcoin's success is a surprise for the whole world.

These people probably knew the importance of BTC more than anyone, why a lot of people think they made bad decisions is because of what BTC price has risen to today, but without these individuals and developers like Gavin Andresen and others, BTC probably may not be where it is today. BTC is a currency, these individuals proved that it is, while Gavin gave people free BTC to promote the coin, these are the people that joined Satoshi to create a history for BTC that we can read today and be amazed.

History is very important, and i think it is wrong to say those who were involved in creating a history for BTC didn't know the importance of the coin, they knew, they knew that it was a currency first before the investment option that many today see it as.

But it is also important to know that the current value of bitcoin is partly due to these people and the others not mentioned. In comparison to its current value, a piece of Manhattan land once sold for a bargain, just like bitcoin. In 2009, would you even buy bitcoin for $15,000? Bitcoin was probably deemed to suffer the same fate as early inventions of a digital currency failed. Since bitcoin is the first and is decentralized, you might wonder if it will last because governments and banks will not like it. Additionally, I would never diminish the minds of those individuals. They carried out the necessary actions to spend bitcoin as a currency.

I am getting to know this for the first time and wondering why these guys are not that much active on the forum. 

By the sirius profile link isn’t working and for laszlo and bitcoinfx both links are same profile.

Anyways, coming to the original post I’m pretty sure bitcoin held least importance at the time because most of them just used it as fun stuff or may be just to “try it out”.  But I’m sure nobody ever thought about the future of bitcoin in that way.

We live by our senses. We see what’s happening in our surroundings and accommodate that way. However, at that time bitcoin could have been just not much interesting stuff for them or they had fun sending it and buy something for it. That was their achievement.

I’m still happy those events happened. They gave us big time learning.

Where should we start calculating these numbers and what is it done for, although it is true they have sold them in the past. Math will always suck and that's why really didn't suit me.

Do you know exactly how many bitcoins are owned by Martti Malmi, Laszlo Hanycez and theymos now. This is important to let people know, that in the past even though they have sold bitcoins at such a cheap price, they have never stopped investing until now. There is also an interesting story in the past, where James Howell threw away a hard drive containing bitcoins in the amount of US $ 350 million or around 5.03 trillion, this poor man's case is worse than Martti Malmi, Laszlo Hanycez and theymos, isn?

First of all i must say, your question would have rub the salt on there wounds. Well i was aware with the Laszlo one but Theymos is totally new for me. and he is the member of Bitcointalk community. well i must say Bitcointalk is full of wonders. Now i am in wondering that maybe some of the old users here would have known Satoshi Nakamoto in person. (maybe).

Now, coming back to your question, we all are humans here and human can make mistakes. as market is full of sentimental signals that urges others to take decisions that they should not have. Well, i say, if they would have aware with the future price of btc then why did they do it? well we all in our history must have done the same things once in a while. Like taking my own example. I mistakenly sell some tokens (not btc) for arround 100$ while few months later they were like around 1500$. i have also lost hell lot of money by following my mis-judgments of market. But all these losses are not go in vain. We all have learnt some lesson from our mistakes.

The real question should arise after the awareness of btc and blockchain. But back in that time we all know btc has faced a lot of limitations and bans that causes price of btc to spike up or down. So overall, its the surprises and wonders of market too that can create millionaire and can make you poor. 

There are many articles on forum related to history of btc and how it bears the ups and downs and how people fall prey these market's ups and downs. Back then, technology was new and less people were familiar with it plus there were less information and tutorials in the market. I am not a past guy because i am Gen-z. Millennials must have grab this opportunity and they were in there great senses back in 2008.

Well, at least they got something for their bitcoins... not like Gavin Anresen who gave away 19700 bitcoins on a faucet to random people.  ;D
https://coingeek.com/how-gavin-andresen-gave-away-19700-bitcoins-in-2010-the-bitcoin-faucet-turns-12/

"If Andresen had held the coins, they’d be worth roughly $500 million today."  --- Ouch!

We also know, Gavin's faucet contributed to the distribution of bitcoins, so it might not have been so popular and also expensive now, if he did not do that.... so it was for a very good goal.  ;)

Really, it's best to avoid price comparisons. You're selling now. Once in a while, the new generation will label us as stupid. Considering that Bitcoin would cost $1 million at that time. It doesn't imply that they were unaware of Bitcoin's importance. Instead, they make use of and adapt it. Bitcoin was designed with peer-to-peer, decentralized money transfer in consideration. They had been doing so and also believed in Bitcoin. But they had not anticipated that the price would change in this manner so quickly.

OP if the people you quote knew, they would never have sold bitcoin so cheap. No one could have imagined that Bitcoin would have such a bright future. I had a friend who got 517000 Hex working on a campaign. According to the market price at that time, it was sold at $0.00058. But after a few days the price of that Hex skyrocketed. Each coin is priced at $0.50. My friend goes crazy when he sees the price increase. Later I told him that nothing can be properly analyzed in cryptocurrency. And there I analyzed the ones given by the OP to my friend and he didn't regret it later.

This is the best example of "no one knows what will happen in the future". For sure most of us also will experience these before if we are in their situations. Before, no one know where Bitcoin will go, and even before there are lot of ups and downs on the Bitcoin price, losing more than 80% - 90% of their value in just short period of time, then for sure those events will also make you confuse to the future of Bitcoin.

No one can know the future well, I will explain you with two examples. Did anyone know before that Do Known's Terra Luna platform went bankrupt in 2022 and this scamming thousands of investors lost billions of dollars? If people had known the news of all these disasters earlier, would anyone have suffered losses?
Again after the SAM BANKMAN-FRIED FTX scam millions of people lost billions of dollars, would anyone have invested if they had known FTX was going to go bankrupt?  No one can predict any cryptocurrency in advance.
Malmi, Laszlo Hanycez, Theymos , If these gentlemen had known in advance that the bitcoins they sold would one day become the world's most talked about currency and go from 0.00099 to $69000 in the market, they might not have sold the bitcoins, or if they had, they would have sold part of their wallets and kept others portion for future reserved.

No one can get any Advanced news about Earthquake in Turkey

https://i.imgur.com/AE0vsDZ.jpg

If the people of Turkey had known about the earthquake in advance, the devastating earthquake would not have killed more than 45,900 Turkish people and 4,500 Syrian people. No one can know in advance the news of natural calamities and unexpected epidemics, just like how the state of the cryptocurrency market will be known in advance.

Precisely in those years, they weren't looking for price, but functionality, experience, and they were really looking for proof that bitcoin was an important thing that brought change. I think they enjoyed their journey which in the end made history that the community will always remember, basically they don't really regret seeing the current price. After all, early adopters were more likely to have more bitcoins left (which used to be considered dust) than today.

Everyone who sold their bitcoins at the lowest price back then was a part of the great sacrifice for the financial revolution and the fruit of their deeds is what we are enjoying right now. As for me, I never had to deal with any banks because I can do some transactions without them but of course, with the help of the current exchanges. Nowadays, only a few people know the history of these guys who sacrificed and perseverance to promote bitcoins until it reaches anyone of us their deeds will never be forgotten and they will always be part of crypto history forever.

Natural disasters are way different. In this field of investment, atleast an investor could make a hunch out of the news simply because news could trigger an FUD or simply simpact the demand as well as the market price of crypto. and this could be somehow of a pattern for anticipation unlike with earthquakes which occur in a sudden.

In terms of investment, risk will always be there. Ofcourse no one can predict the future that is why potential is being relied on, added with taking the risk. What happened with terra Luna is indeed devastating for investors but there is a huge difference with Bitcoin for being on a bigger chain, I guess. And other tokenomic characteristics.But this is not to be biased of it; ofcourse there is a tendency for the market to collapse in the future including Bitcoin. That is why this industry is only for those who are willing to take that risk; who'd more consider the potential than to be scared of that risk. For investors, it would be better to lose trying than to not do anything.

But if they didn't sell the Bitcoin so cheaply, perhaps nobody would have ever bought them, and then perhaps the Bitcoin economy would have never taken off and started growing. I would not underestimate the intent of the people quoted here that sold Bitcoin for a cheap price. The only way for them to test whether what they believe to be true about Bitcoin is actually true, is to give Bitcoin away almost for free, but not for zero. Is someone willing to give me something in exchange for them even if it is only fun and experimental reasons?

And think about the next step: if the guy who sold the pizza talks to someone else and says hey, I got these 10,000 coins called Bitcoin for pizza that I sold, how about you give me that for 5,000 BTC. That spurs interest and people get excited about it. The least they will do is google it and find this forum and then dig into it. It was essentially a community and network building measure and the pizza story was perfect.

Even if the pizza story was deliberately created in order to pump the price afterwards and then get the message out because the pizza guy freaks out and can't believe what he just received for selling his pizza, you can be sure that the pizza guy alone is going to spread the message where ever the damn he can.

Whether the actions of the guys quoted here were smart moves or accidental exchanges, it helped to get Bitcoin where it is today.

I do know someone personally who actually did sell accidentally. He sold 30,000 Bitcoin for $1 a piece and bought a BMW. :D This is no fake story! And he did indeed regret it later on.

Yo, can you believe we're celebrating Bitcoin Piza Day? Like, seriously, its crazy that we're using a virtual currency that nobody really gets. I mean, yeah, Laszlo Hanycez made history by trading his Bitcoins for some pizas, but did he even consider the future value of those coins? Bet he's kicking himself now.

It blows my mind how back then people didnt realize the true worth of Bitcoin. Martti Malmi dumped 5050 Bitcoyns for just $0.00099/BTC, and thats the lowest record sale ever. Just imagine how loaded he'd be if he'd kept hold of them! But hey, atleast he can brag about being the first guy to sell Bitcoyn through PayPal, right?

What I deduce from your story is that none of them lost the investment sense in bitcoin, at a point they would have held it in high prime and later realized it is high time to trade it off, even with the person that traded it for pizza.

@OP, you wouldn't be creating this thread if today's year is 2010, Bitcoin price is too cheap that day, and there is not much adoption, Bitcoin is starting out and at the same time, the market needs to move to show the world that Bitcoin is trading.  If no one trades during those days, do you think Bitcoin will reach its milestone today?  I never thought those early trades are a waste.  I believe they are significant trading that molded what the Bitcoin market is today.

By the time they exchange bitcoin for pizza are they stupid? I don't think so because no one knows that the price of bitcoin can be like it is today, let's talk about alcoin for a moment like Binance when it first came to the market, many did not believe it and sold it at a cheap price. selling at low prices as well as bitcoin at that time.

Are you blaming them? we should be grateful to them because they are the pioneers who created the world's first bitcoin transactions just to prove that bitcoin can work and have value. It is without those transactions, I believe we would not be able to witness the development of bitcoin today.

You need to remember that the success of bitcoin is also a surprise to everyone, I believe that if we were at that time we would also sell bitcoin if bitcoin was traded. Each period will have different developments, at that time, the bitcoin transaction was an unexpected success.

Is this thread title a rhetorical question? Of course that those people didn't knew that the Bitcoin price is going to hit tens of thousands of dollars several years later. At least they had the balls to sell some BTC and the buyers had the balls to spend fiat money for BTC. What if BTC failed as a project and the BTC price went down to zero? The people, who bought BTC would have been ridiculed as complete fools.
Back in 2009-2010, the main goal of Bitcoin wasn't the price getting higher and making more profits by buying low and selling high.
The goal of Bitcoin was to become an alternative to all fiat currencies. Well, Bitcoin kinda failed at achieving that goal, but it became a successful financial asset.

It's pretty weird what your point is in posting this thread, like you are talking to them stupidly about selling it. Imagine they sell it for a purpose and for a reason, and because of their sell, there is a huge jump in the popularity of bitcoin all over the world. I find it cool and amazed that it was the first time to buy pizza using virtual currency and those other things before, because that year the internet was not known at that time and only a few people had it.

I posted a longer text above yours, would like if you give it a read and comment on it as there I explain why I think that they are not kicking themselves right now. Those Bitcoin trades or exchanges or sales might have been much more deliberate than most of us could ever imagine. The pioneers had to get the economy going and there is no better advertisement than a pizza man spreading the unbelievable truth that he received 10,000 USD from a guy for Pizza when Bitcoin hit $1 for the first time. It was obvious that the story is going to spread like wild fire. You could phrase it whatever way you want, but it catches peoples' eyes when they read "how this pizza guy turned his pizza into 10,000 USD, no lie!"

I think it could have well been an outstanding marketing move, too. One war or another, even if today someone hears the team "Bitcoin Pizza Day", it still is interesting enough for some to do some google search on it. They still find out about Bitcoin and the story gets stuck in peoples' heads.

Plus, if we just buy and hold, or even back in the day we just bought and hold, the price wouldn't have gone up the way it did, we need to spend it, use it, and basically earn it as well in order to make it look like its actually a currency that should be used and many people missed that part. Imagine a world where you own all the bitcoins ever created, nobody else has any bitcoins, you own 21 million of them, no more miners, no nothing, just you.

Do you think we would still want to buy it? Of course not, which means that if there were too many people with tens of thousands of bitcoins, then why would we want to be part of it? We needed it to be sold in order to grow.

Anybody that haven't heard anything about Bitcoin they don't know the Important of Bitcoin,or someone that learning how to invest in Bitcoin he will not know the Important of BTC on till he/her go deeper before he/her will understand Bitcoin,or know the importance of Bitcoin. More interested in Bitcoin buy and hold, bring it out when rising,the achieve of Bitcoin was to become an alternative to all fiat currencies. Well, Bitcoin extent failed at achieving that goal, but it became a successful financial capital. way it did, we need to spend it, use it, and basically earn it as well in order to make it look like its actually a currency that should be used and many people missed that part.

Surely, those names mentioned by the OP got their own history with bitcoin and probably regretted how cheap they sold their coins back at that time but just like what you've said, nobody knows the bitcoin's future at that time. Even now, the future might be bright to think but it is not guaranteed because it if were, I bet there's a lot of people right now who bought their own coins and bitcoin might be scarce already at this point. But that is not the case because we really don't know what will happen in the years to come.

It's still in the experimental stage in real terms and you can't claim that they don't think that bitcoin is as important and as valuable as it is now, and again they use bitcoin as if the utility of bitcoin as a replacement currency for FIAT is different like nowadays which mostly use bitcoin as an investment alternative as a way to profit from the increase in the price of bitcoin, so I think you are wrong in understanding bitcoin in its initial function which is the goal of satoshi.
If only they knew bitcoin would be worth as much as it is now they probably wouldn't be selling/giving away their bitcoins like that.

Not many people knew about bitcoin at the time, nor did many of their holders know what would have happened in the future had they not spent those bitcoin for a few cents. Of course many of us would say it was a bad decision after getting to $69K in 2021, but to be honest at the time they didn't even believe bitcoin could be worth $0.1 in a few years.

After all, there weren't a lot of real use cases back then because bitcoin hadn't gained much interested and how did it get as high as it is now. So those few bitcoin users have helped inspired many people to explore more of the potential uses of bitcoin and have definitely become a initial foundation for bitcoin today.

If I have to answer your question (Did they not know about the importance of Bitcoin?), it should be like this. You can predict the future, but you can't be 100% sure that it will happen no matter what. Were they stupid? No. Was it just luck? No. It was just a bad decision, but for that they have created history and that's why we are still talking about them in 2023. It's because of them, now we know the true value of bitcoin. Agreed?
They paid the price for us to learn. Maybe it's a good thing, right?

I know about Lazlo, he has the most popular bitcoin sale record according to me.
I know just a little part about Martti, I have never really found the time to search and read the full story.

But coming to Theymos, it's actually unbelievable for me that I am just learning about his bitcoin sale for the first time ever, 160 bitcoins in today's price is sickening and worth an unbelievable amount of money, but was sold for a mere $0.48 cents, really unbelievable, I would love to really know what Theymos was really thinking at the time, I am assuming he made this sell just to test out the ability to sell and buy bitcoin 😂, because what possibly could he have needed $0.48 cents for?

Might he sell his 160BTC to test exchanges and buy it again, it was possible. But as we can see, Bitcoin had almost no value in its early days. In fact, those who have known Bitcoin before have never thought it could reach the price we have today, even Theymos. But everything that happens in the crypto market is a big surprise and even known personalities have no idea to reach the point of being talked about across the globe. We can really think that their decision is crazy but that just before because nobody can do that again and they are making history and it is a big help to compare from what it happen today and in the future.

Yup, and here's some facts for the OP. Those 3 people mentioned who made a history was already lucky that they've known bitcoin at that point in time where it is not yet making any fuss in the world. What they did was a choice and that choice was to make a history, and surely what they did paid off because look at the market now.
Furthermore, I really don't believe that those moves they made was already their entire bitcoin investment. As I said above, it was a choice and those coins were sacrificed to make a noise.

Many of time that these events happens are when Bitcoin was not tro known so the value was less. Many of us did not know about Bitcoin them that is the story still hurt so many persons till now. Many of those that had Bitcoin then sold them or lost the private keys that is needed to have access to the fund. Time is what matters to us as a trader. Now that Bitcoin price is below $30k we might be thinking that the price is lesser and isntye current height that is why we just need to hold for long do that Bitcoin can add more value.

right now I imagine if they sell bitcoin today they will definitely make a very big profit.

but yeah, so be it. because time has passed and let it be unique and good history.

I think people who sell bitcoins at low prices because they have reasons which of course I certainly won't be able to guess, but I'm just speculating and in my opinion they sell bitcoins at low prices because they have a very large number of bitcoins. and all they sell is the fraction of what he owns.

This is just an assumption, if they hadn't sold during those days the price of bitcoin might not be seen as high as now. Only after the bitcoin purchase it is believed to have value and people started it as payment here and there. It was the first real world transaction in the form of bitcoin. Everyone could've known about the importance, but none could've estimated the growth to be this high. In one of his interview he admitted

“If I had treated it as an investment, I might have held on a bit longer,” Mr Sturdivant admitted in 2018.

“I would never have thought that the same number of bitcoin would have a purchasing power on the order of real estate.”

Meet the crypto developer who spent $3.7 billion in Bitcoin on pizza (https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/bitcoin-pizza-sell-crypto-jeremy-sturdivant-b1854212.html)

For exact answers, those who will be able to answer are the people you mentioned.

but I think that this incident makes us think that we shouldn't delay buying bitcoins, of course, if we have money, and who knows the price of bitcoins in the future will be much more expensive.

In economics there is a process called price discovery, and as the name implies it is the process in which the price of every asset is determined, and the only way to do this is by buying and selling the asset.

This is why bitcoin was 22k dollars a few days ago and now you can buy it for slightly less than 20k, the buyers and sellers are always trying to figure out the price of everything, and without those early adopters selling their coins this process would not have begun, after all it was speculated that bitcoin had value but without anyone being able to buy anything with it this could not be proven, only after those transactions took place people knew their coins had some monetary value which they could use if need it.

I think by the time they trade bitcoins or sell their bitcoins because they want to prove that bitcoin works and bitcoin has value, I think that's all they need. At the time, no one was interested in the new technology of bitcoin, bitcoin was almost worthless and was offered for free on faucets. Something that can be obtained for free and can be sold is a resounding success.
The success of bitcoin is a surprise to the world, I believe that if satoshi is still alive and watching us out there, he can't help but be surprised by his invention.

They did what they had to. Was it a coincidence? Think not. They did what they had to. They paved the road for us, and we are walking on it right now. It started with just 2 pizzas and now we are able to buy anything that we want with Bitcoin. Everything has its own purpose.


Indeed, I think the same. They still got their fair share in their hand, for sure.

Of course, just imagine how big money they can earn by selling 5,050 Bitcoins or 10,000 Bitcoins. They should become rich people immediately.  ;D
However, if they didn't sell their bitcoins, their names won't be noted in the history of Bitcoin. By selling Bitcoin at the lowest prices, anyone will know them forever.

Sure, they have very strong reasons. They sold Bitcoin in 2009 or 2010, don't imagine there are many exchanges to sell Bitcoin. At that time, no one wants Bitcoin and realizing the future of Bitcoin. People who sold their Bitcoin at very cheap prices, becomes the initiator of the future Bitcoin price. If they didn't sell the Bitcoin, Bitcoin may have no big value as today.

I think it is more accurate to say that we can not predict the future but we can speculate what will be going to happen next.  Since it is established that no one can precisely predict the next price of Bitcoin but every one can speculate and say what they think will be the price of Bitcoin in the future.



I believe the early trade of bitcoin was never a bad decision.  Without these early trades, bitcoin will never start trading.  So are you saying that all these people who started trading Bitcoin at a price of less than a cent do not know the importance of Bitcoin?  I bet they know that Bitcoin being traded is way more important than thinking about the future price of it.


Definitely, a good thing for the Bitcoin economy because if no one dares to part with their BTC, trades will never happen and the Bitcoin economy won't grow like this.

As top cryptocurrency bitcoin has many benefits to like no counterfeiting, globalization and international payments. As a digital currency, there is a record of each and every transaction on the network so it's nearly impossible to counterfeit. Bitcoin can help transfer funds globally and the transaction cost is so minimal. Bitcoin has no physical boundaries like dollars or rupees so you can transmit it all across the world.

Even though these three people may not have known it, they made Bitcoin history when they bought and sold the first things with it. The things they did helped Bitcoin grow into what it is now.

That is right because at that time bitcoin just kicked off and there is a need for activities on the network, the price of Bitcoin at that time does not matter to the early testers.

What matter to them, is to test have effective and secured the network is,  those guys made history regardless of what amount of bitcoin was transacted at what price.

It's the top coin in crypto and it's trading volume is high compared to other coins in the market. Many investors anticipate investment in bitcoin and have contributes to their solid road map over the decades. It's not a fiat currency but it's a digital currency which can served multiple purposes at a time. It can't be duplicated like other coin, it ranges in value and pieces. Bitcoin have several purposes in the space and great beneficiary to the people who are awared about the existence of the solid project.

Even if we agree that the Lazlo the bitcoin pizza guy doesn't know that bitcoin will value much. How about syrus who is said to be working closely with Satoshi. He should also know the value of bitcoin.
How about theymos?
Infact the event of theymos transactions made me understand it is not a matter of ignorance.  Either they use the sells at that time to achieve something on bitcoin network, better still to make history.
Now, those names you mentioned are all heroes as long as bitcoin exists.

They were the first people to know Bitcoin so at that time the value was still low but they already had so many bitcoins and sold them at very cheap prices, I am sure they are great people but now regret must be felt, because the value of bitcoin increased so much and they already sold so many bitcoins at that time, And right now those of us who can't get Bitcoin so big like them and keep trying so that the breakthrough they once did doesn't repeat itself because it will be a very painful history.

We can't predict how time will go. If we go back to their time, surely that was the best decision they made. But if we are basing on the present, we are really confused as to why they sold their Btc when it reached such a very high price. Sometimes we can think "what if". So now that we can't go back, it's better to focus today and how we can make our future beautiful. Our emotions sometimes make decisions for us, so we must be able to control our emotions so that the decision we make is right. Just like what happened to Btc currently, it just suddenly dumped, maybe you're so afraid that its price will drop so much that makes you think you'll just sell your investments. But if you have faith in Btc and have the right mindset, you will definitely not be affected by that dump. It's normal for a dump to happen, and it's also happened before for Btc, so there's nothing to be afraid of.

I think on the contrary, Syrus and even Satoshi cannot know anything about the future of Bitcoin at all. They created bitcoin with the sole purpose of creating an alternative to fiat, but they couldn't tell if people would accept it or not. At that point, all they can do is set expectations and hope everyone will think the same way they do and accept it. Bitcoin is decentralized, it goes against the government's stance. I think Satoshi partly predicted that the government would not easily accept bitcoin, so he chose to remain anonymous forever.