The 10K pizza guy is mentioned a lot.
Because thinking that you digested what 99.99% of people on earth will be unable to earn in their lifetime must be maddening if you don't control your greed
It is not completely true that this started btc economy, but it sure was one of the very highly referred to transactions. Thing is, this is not a million dollar pizza, it actually was a (still overpriced) $42 pizza. Value of something makes sense only at one point in time; it is a completely different object at a different time, you can't compare 10k btc from 2009 with 10k btc in 2013 - they are completely different things, one of which has been held tight through numerous hacks, rallies and crashes, hard drive failures and so on, so naturally they have much more value than 2009 coins - these were some rough times.
Indeed. The more battle-hardened the concept is, the more valuable it will be. People complain about how hard it is to use, how it has such a small chance of really "making it", low adoption rate, etc. The truth is, if it had all of those things, you wouldn't be able to afford a mB let alone a full Bitcoin.