John Schnatter, the founder of Papa John's, at the 2011 American Music Awards in Los Angeles. Thomson Reuters 
 
 Happy Bitcoin Pizza Day! 
 
 On May 22, crypto enthusiasts around the world celebrate the anniversary of one of the earliest bitcoin purchases: two Papa John's pizzas for 10,000 bitcoins. 
 
 Laszlo Hanyecz, a programmer, purchased the two pizzas in 2010 from another person in Jacksonville, Florida, according to The New York Times. In an interview with the newspaper in 2013, Hanyecz didn't sound too broken up about the deal. 
 
 "It wasn't like bitcoins had any value back then, so the idea of trading them for a pizza was incredibly cool," Hanyecz said. 
 
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 Still, those coins would be worth $82 million at bitcoin's Tuesday price of $8,200 a coin, according to Markets Insider data. There's a Twitter account that provides a daily update on how much the pizzas would have cost based on the latest price of bitcoin. 
 
 Twitter/@bitcoin_pizza 
 
 For its part, CoinDesk released a 'Bitcoin Pizza Day' Price Tracker on Tuesday. 
 
 eToro sent Business Insider UK a pizza to celebrate the day. Here's a tweet from finance reporter Oscar Williams-Grut: 
 
 Bitcoin gained worldwide attention at the end of last year as it soared close to $20,000 a coin and infiltrated trading and investment firms across Wall Street. But its origins trace back to 2008 and an anonymous creator known as Satoshi Nakamoto, whose vision was to create a rival financial system based on a technology called blockchain. 
 
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 Still, many merchants are wary of accepting bitcoin because of its spine-tingling volatility. Last year, Morgan Stanley described the lack of places to buy goods with bitcoin. 
 
 "The disparity between virtually no merchant acceptance and bitcoin's rapid appreciation is striking," the analysts wrote. 
 
 That hasn't kept Wall Street away. Several top trading firms are active in crypto markets, including DRW and Virtu Financial. Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs is preparing to launch a bitcoin-trading operation, and Morgan Stanley has been looking to beef up its equity-research unit with crypto experts. ||||| Today is Bitcoin Pizza Day. Eight years ago, on May 22, 2010, a programmer purchased two large Papa John’s pizzas for 10,000 bitcoins, worth about $30 at the time. It’s widely believed to be the first purchase of a product with bitcoin, proving the then-nascent cryptocurrency’s potential as a means of payment. 
 
 Bitcoin was less than two years old when Laszlo Hanyecz decided to spend some of the coins he had mined on some real-world goods. The coins were worth just a fraction of a cent at the time, and no merchant accepted them as a means of payment. So he posted on the main gathering place for bitcoiners at the time, the Bitcointalk forum: 
 
 I’ll pay 10,000 bitcoins for a couple of pizzas.. like maybe 2 large ones so I have some left over for the next day. I like having left over pizza to nibble on later. You can make the pizza yourself and bring it to my house or order it for me from a delivery place, but what I’m aiming for is getting food delivered in exchange for bitcoins where I don’t have to order or prepare it myself, kind of like ordering a ‘breakfast platter’ at a hotel or something, they just bring you something to eat and you’re happy! 
 
 Another user, who went by “jercos” on the forum, took Hanyecz up on his offer. Hanyecz sent the bitcoin to jercos, who then placed the pizza order. The transaction had to be finalized over internet relay chat, according to the Bitcoin Wiki. Since then, the price of bitcoin has taken off, and those two pizzas would be worth a lot more at the going rate for 10,000 bitcoins. How much more? Roughly $82 million for the order, or more than $4 million per slice: 
 
 This February, Hanyecz made a similar transaction, sending about $67 worth of bitcoin—that is, 0.00649 of a bitcoin—to a friend in London for two pizzas delivered to him in Florida. The coins were sent over the Lightning Network, a system that bitcoiners hope will keep bitcoin transaction fees low. 
 
 Hanyecz’s point with making another pizza purchase? To prove that bitcoin could remain a viable payment system with the addition of the Lightning Network. “Maybe eventually pizza shops will have their own Lightning nodes and I can open channels to them directly,” he wrote on the mailing list for Lightning developers. ||||| On May 22, 2010, Hanyecz asked a fellow enthusiast on a bitcoin forum to accept 10,000 bitcoin for two Papa John's Pizzas. At the time, Hanyecz believed that the coins he had "mined" on his computer were worth around 0.003 cents each. 
 
 Bitcoin mining involves solving a complex mathematical solution with the miner being rewarded in bitcoin. This is how Hanyecz got his initial coins. 
 
 The cryptocurrency has many doubters as it continues to be associated with criminal activity, but it has still seen a stunning rally. Here are two facts, on Bitcoin Pizza Day, however, that highlight this: 
 
 While being worth $30 at the time, Hanyecz pizzas would now cost $22.5 million at current bitcoin prices. 
 
 If you bought $100 of bitcoin at the 0.003 cent price on May 22, 2010, you'd now be sitting on around $75 million. 
 
 A number of factors have been driving the rally: 
 
 Recently passed legislation in Japan that allows retailers to start accepting bitcoin as a legal currency has boosted trading in yen, which now accounts for over 40 percent of all bitcoin trade 
 
 Political uncertainty globally has driven demand for bitcoin as a safe haven asset 
 
 A debate within the bitcoin community about the future of the underlying technology behind bitcoin known as the blockchain has been taking place. There was fear at one point this could lead to the creation of two separate cryptocurrencies but those worries have largely subsided with an alternative, more palatable option now being put forward. 
 
 For an in-depth look at the factors driving bitcoin, click here.
– Monday was Bitcoin Pizza Day, the anniversary of the day in 2010 when developer Laszlo Hanyecz paid 10,000 bitcoins for two pizzas in the online currency's first recognized transaction. The same amount of bitcoins would be worth around $22.5 million now. The currency, which sank to $443 a year ago, is up more than 65% so far this month and has been soaring to record highs, passing $2,000 for the first time over the weekend and breaking through the $2,100 and $2,200 marks on Monday, reports CNBC, which notes that a $100 investment in bitcoins exactly seven years ago would be worth more than $75 million at the $2,251 price it reached Monday. Analysts say several factors are behind the steep rise in the price of the currency, including political uncertainty worldwide and the ironing out of technical issues. Japan has also given bitcoins a big boost with new legislation allowing retailers to accept the currency. "The Japanese have caught the bitcoin bug and inefficiencies across markets are being exposed," CryptoCompare founder Charles Hayter tells Business Insider. But other "crypto-currencies," including Ethereum and Ripple, have been rising even faster than bitcoin, leading analysts to warn that a bubble appears to be developing, the BBC reports.