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It was a great time to be starting accumulating Bitcoin for sure. As for the price being so low, I didn't plan it, it was pure luck. I had been thinking of buying Bitcoin since 2013, but I was not so keen on opening an exchange account, and there was no Bitcoin ATM nearby, so I kept postponing it. Then MtGox came and went, and I was not even paying much attention to it. At some point in mid-2015, a Bitcoin ATM started operating inside a shop, near the home of a friend of mine, so I jumped at the opportunity. I drove there myself and bought 0.47 BTC for $100+ (maybe it was $120 -- can't remember exactly). I kept the 0.47 BTC on my phone (I was using a very generic Bitcoin wallet app on Android, which was free and open-source I think). Anyway, I left it there and forgot about it for 3 months. Then I opened the wallet, and the price of the 0.47 BTC had risen to $180! When I saw this, I called my friend and asked him if I could wire him $1000 so that he can buy more for me. He agreed, and, after a few days, he bought 2 more BTC for me. I remember he sent me photos of 3 QR codes for 0.67 BTC each.
...and that's how the journey started for me.
I could have gone all-in at that time, and would now have several times more coins, but I'm not complaining. It could have been much, much worse, had I not bought that first 0.47 BTC. Got to pay a visit to that shop and thank the owner. Or maybe not... OPSEC... Maybe make an anonymous donation to him after the next ATH...
Fun fact: my friend, who bought the 2 BTC for me, thought of buying for himself too at that time, but after Googling it he told me he found "evidence" that Bitcoin was being used for illegal activities (as if USD wasn't), and so he didn't buy any. Fast-forward to 2025, 10 years later, and he's asking me to help him register to an exchange to buy Bitcoin! Prices have gone up 400x since that time in 2015. He is now a low-coiner, he has, maybe, 0.1 BTC. Had he made that purchase in 2015, he would now have 40 BTC.
I would suggest that there was an extended period between about September 2014 until about May 2016, that BTC prices were below $500 for pretty much that whole time, and with a large amount of that time with BTC prices that were $250 or below..
Even if a guy wanted to buy bitcoin
(you seemed to have had personally lived that), there is decently large enough difference between wanting to buy and going through the motions to actually execute some kind of ongoing and persistent buys (even if small), and even back then when I told guys who were on the fence to just buy $10 per week (back then $10 per week was even better than today's $100 per week), and I considered $10 per week to be quite on the whimpy-side that even guys with pretty tight cashflows could have had been able to manage to be able to do - especially if they had an income of anything more than $500 per month.
Even if a guy were pretty whimpy in his bitcoin investment and put in $10 per week between September 2014 and December 2016, he would have had invested slightly more than $1k during that time and accumulate right around 3 BTC, yet at the same time, the mere performance of the invested money between September 2014 and December 2016 should have had inspired even such hypothesized whimpy buyer to buy BTC even more aggressively into the future - yet part of the trick seems to be getting started and following an ongoing buying discipline for a while, which seems to have had been the case in bitcoinlandia even after that 2014-2016 time period.
Of course, if guys came into bitcoin prior to some BTC price peak and started to accumulate BTC through the price peak and onto the other side of the price peak, it could well have had taken those kinds of guys more than a couple of years to start to feel really comfortable with the results of their ongoing and persistent buying of BTC.. yet getting to that mental state seems to involve ongoing buying action that sometimes can feel painful, even with relatively low amounts of money.
I understand that there is a sacrifice whenever we lock up value for 4-10 years or more and it is even better if we are able to mentally treat the invested amounts as amounts that we can afford to lose, so we know that we might not be able to consume it later, even 4-10 years or more down the road, even though at the same time, we may well would have had been studying bitcoin and coming to realize that bitcoin seems to have an asymmetric upside potential, which may well motivate us to continue to buy bitcoin, even though we know that the upside scenario may not end up playing out.
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But still, I don't believe that arranging with someone to exchange 10,000 BTC for 2 pizzas really means anything, or was the catalyst for anything. It's just a fun story to tell, and a nice example to demonstrate Bitcoin's huge price appreciation over the years.
It is a set of facts of some things that actually happened in the space, whether we considered the things to be staged or not, and whether we might know some of the details of the back story, besides just the superficial idea that a guy spent 10k BTC for 2 Papa John's pizzas and made a big deal out of trying to get folks to take him up on the offer to make sure that the transaction could be achieved.
You might be correct that too much spin might go to the story, and even sometimes various wrong assumptions including disputes about whether it was really the first meaningful ways in which bitcoin was being used to buy goods/services.
It might even seem to be overly amazing in terms of what it might show - and sometimes none of that makes much sense to a newbie, even though even newbies might need some kind of context in terms of coming to understand bitcoin and becoming inspired to buy his first bitcoin whether he is considering buying in order to make some other transactions or if he is considering to buy with a potential to have greater purchasing power in the future based on his currently pending buys.
By the way, even if the bitcoin pizza story is ONLY known for the number go up angle of bitcoin, that angle of bitcoin frequently can get people started buying bitcoin, even if they might not immediately figure out the difference between holding actual bitcoin versus their maybe getting started with some version of paper bitcoin (bitcoin price exposure that might not really be an easy way to carry out any kind of direct transaction as compared to holding the bitcoin in some kind of a self-custodial form).
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Maybe, I don’t want to be Jercos, who sold the 10,000 BTC for about 400 bucks.
That was exactly my point. It's not about who did anything, it's about what they did.
After reading the Bitcoin White Paper, understanding how Bitcoin works, and realizing its potential, there is absolutely no way I would exchange 10,000 BTC for 2 pizzas, $400, or any other petty amount.
So many people did it though?
I am not sure about how we can explain how some folks seem to get the HODL thesis and others cannot get it.
We cannot act like they are some kind of a strange animal, and surely we have to see the difference between Laszlo and Jercos, since just from the facts, we know that Laszlo had a great surplus of ongoing BTC coming into his various wallets, while any person further down the road, did not have such incoming bitcoin stream like Laszlo had at that time, and who knows how long Laszlo persisted in his bitcoin mining?
I doubt it is reasonable to treat all of the newbie transactors the same, and you, AlcoHoDL, seem to be so negative on the practice of transacting, even though we know that transaction can be done in spend and replace ways, rather than spending all of it. Bitcoin continues to be better if actual transactions between individuals can happen, even though these days, there are various powers that be who merely want to use bitcoin for themselves and make self-custody illegal (or overly burdensome).
I think that we can turn these stories into our own ways to ongoingly advocate for self-custody and abilities for guys to transact directly without having to go through burdensome accounting and/or burdensome KYC/AML requirements. From the perspective of this here cat, third parties should be voluntary rather than imposed upon us normies.
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Maybe I should have used the phrase
"we can assume that 5 million coins are in the possession of these countries/companies", because unless someone publicly admits that they have something and proves it, it all boils down to speculation. However, the fact is that we read more and more about how some countries like the US or Brazil have really big appetites in the future when it comes to Bitcoin, and what would happen if more countries appeared that wanted something similar?
Maybe I'm wrong, but if any of this comes true, millions of coins will be in the possession of states and companies, and accordingly the price should rise significantly, and it doesn't seem unreasonable to talk about even $500k for 1 BTC in the next 5-7 years.
You seem to be assuming more than me.
Even though a large number of us know that one of the only ways (perhaps the only way?) to really have confidence that coins are not being rehypothecated is to hold those coins directly or to have some kind of a proof of reserves that is detailed enough to show that our coins are not moving. There are few third party custodians that provide proof of reserves in such specific kinds of ways that allows the ability of the client to see coins are not moving.
Sure, it is possible that the BIG players are negotiating better custodian arrangements that allow them to see that non-rehypothecation is taking place, but I am not going to give them the benefit of the doubt on such question.
Once the coins are rehypothecated, then how many fucking times are they rehypothecated, and one of the ONLY ways to really test that they have the coins that they claim to have is by having a run on the bank... which surely I would like to see more runs on the banks to really put the custodian twats to the test, yet I am not sure if I am just engaging in wishful thinking or not? I (just like many folks) have almost no fucking clue what percentage of the actual bitcoin these various custodian twats have locked up rather than using such coins to sell and resell and resell to such an extent that the actual coins are at risk... and even they could get in trouble if they actually have as high as 10% of the coins they claim to have if there was an ability and actual outcome of doing an actual run on the bank.
Third party custodians and the various financial instruments that have been created are really an attack on bitcoin's 21 million supply.. which may be in the ballpark of several times that amount currently, if we were able to figure out the actual number of claims on coins.
I am not claiming to know any exact solutions, besides more normies (and even the BIGGER players) to take actual custody of their coins in a non-rehypothecatable way... even though I am ongoingly expressing frustration with the seemingly ongoing creation of coins through various bitcoin paper products.
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