Bitcoin Pizza Day, May 22. The SimpleSwap team revisits the strangest receipts from crypto’s first decade and what they reveal about where the market is headed next.
In 2010, Bitcoin lived on a forum, far from Wall Street's attention. ETFs were unimaginable; regulators didn't know what to call them. What it did have was a few thousand believers and one very specific question. Could you actually buy anything with this stuff? The answer turned out to be yes. Pizza, wool socks, donations to a sanctioned whistleblower, even a used hybrid car. Today, those receipts read like billion-dollar inside jokes; back then, they were just Tuesday on bitcointalk. May 22 marks Bitcoin Pizza Day. To commemorate it, the SimpleSwap team has lined up five of the strangest and most consequential purchases ever made with BTC, back when one coin bought a snack, not a yacht.
Two Papa John's Pizzas: a $1 Billion Snack
Source: public.bnbstatic.com
The transaction every crypto kid learns first. On May 22, 2010, Florida programmer Laszlo Hanyecz sent 10,000 BTC to Jeremy Sturdivant, who ordered two large Papa John's pizzas in return. The bitcoin was worth roughly $41 at the time. At 2026 prices, the same coins clear over $1 billion. Hanyecz wasn't just hungry. He was running an experiment: could digital coins actually buy a physical object? They could. Block 57,043 of the Bitcoin blockchain still records the trade, including the 1 BTC tip he added on top. He didn't stop there either. Blockchain analysts have linked Hanyecz's wallet to roughly 100,000 BTC in spending throughout 2010, much of it on more pizza. He has said in interviews that he doesn't regret it.
Alpaca Wool Socks: How Bitcoin Got Its Mascot
Source: dailycoin.com
In February 2011, a small farm in Haydenville, Massachusetts called Grass Hill Alpacas started accepting BTC for socks. The push came from David Forster, the owner's son, who wanted into crypto but didn't trust anyone enough to mail an envelope of cash for the coins. Opening price: 75 BTC per pair. By June 2011, demand had dropped the price to 5 BTC. A Slashdot post mocking the whole thing with "Do alpacas really wear socks?" turned the animal into Bitcoin's unofficial mascot, and the phrase "alpaca-sock-wearing crypto-terrorists" stuck around in the community for years after. The farm sold out within weeks. Forster, like most early adopters, didn't hold the coins he received.
WikiLeaks Donations: When Bitcoin Got Political
Source: bitcoinist.com
In December 2010, WikiLeaks published the U.S. State Department cables. Within days, Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, Western Union, and Bank of America had all cut the organization off, killing 95% of its donation income. Six months later, in June 2011, WikiLeaks published a Bitcoin address. The community responded fast: 171 BTC arrived in the first seven days. By 2017, Julian Assange was tweeting that WikiLeaks had earned a 50,000% return on its bitcoin reserves, alongside a sarcastic thank-you to the U.S. government for "forcing" the move. This was the moment crypto stopped being a hobby project. Satoshi Nakamoto, still active at the time, posted one of his last public messages warning the network wasn't ready for that kind of attention. Then he disappeared.
A Used Toyota Prius: The First Car Bought on the Chain
Source: thedrive.com
In 2013, Bitcoin developer "Rassah" (Michael Tozoni) paid 1,000 BTC for a used Toyota Prius valued at roughly $22,000 at the time. The same 1,000 BTC today sits well into eight-figure territory. The car itself became a roving museum piece. It hit over 30 Bitcoin events, ferried hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash from early BTC ATMs, picked up signatures from a who 's-who of crypto developers, and survived a 2021 crash that nearly totalled it. After the restoration, the Prius was auctioned off at Bitcoin 2023 in Miami. Final hammer price: 1.2 BTC. A piece of crypto archaeology that now costs less than its own legend.
A Ticket to Space
Source: techmonitor.ai
In November 2013, Virgin Galactic announced it would accept BTC for sub-orbital flights at $250,000 a seat. The first taker was a flight attendant from Hawaii who paid the full fare in coins — 350 BTC, to be exact. Richard Branson personally welcomed her onto the future passenger manifest on CNBC, calling Bitcoin "a new exciting currency." Those 350 BTC at 2026 prices would clear roughly $35 million, depending on the day. The flight itself? Still pending; Virgin Galactic's regular commercial service only began years later. It remains the most expensive frequent-flyer commitment in crypto history, paid in advance.
What Changed
Five strange receipts, all from a market that wasn't supposed to work. None of them looked historic at the time. Each one quietly proved a different point: that BTC could buy a meal, ship physical goods across state lines, route around sanctions, replace cash at a car dealership, and pre-book a seat on a rocket. The network grew by expanding into new categories. SimpleSwap has watched that growth from the infrastructure side, routing swaps since 2018 through bear markets, bull runs, the rise of institutional desks, and the launch of spot ETFs. Across 2,800+ assets and 20+ liquidity providers, our system picks the route under the hood so users don't have to compare rates by hand. Your next "historic transaction" doesn't have to be the kind you tell with regret!
This article was written by SimpleSwap — a self-custodial multi-source swap aggregator. 2,800+ assets, 20+ liquidity providers across CEX and DEX sources, 20M+ swaps since 2018. Wallet-to-wallet by design, with routing handled under the hood.
The information in this article is not a piece of financial advice or any other advice of any kind. The reader should be aware of the risks involved in trading cryptocurrencies and make their own informed decisions. SimpleSwap is not responsible for any losses incurred due to such risks.
