#Offthechain
Brought to you by düber
On May 17th 2010, Laszlo Hanyecz told the world that he would like to trade 10,000 bitcoins for a couple of pizzas. The pizzas could be handmade or delivered from a chain, just as long as he didn’t have to order it himself. He was pretty flexible in his topping preferences, stating “…just standard stuff no weird fish topping or anything like that.” Four days later his quest was successful, and the first documented purchase using bitcoin was achieved. In 2010, those 10,000 bitcoins were worth about $41. At the current rate of $6,000+ per bitcoin, the sale equates to over $60,000,000 for two pizzas. This statistic, usually updated whenever bitcoin hits a new all time high, is called the Bitcoin Pizza Index.
That’s incredible on its own, but looking at the ROI over that time period is even more amazing. A stake in Bitcoin from 2010-present would equate to a return on investment of 146,341,363%. Yes, a 146 million percent return. That number is so large it’s almost incomprehensible, so let’s break it down further. This figure amounts to an annualized return of 574% over those 7.4 years. If you had bought Apple stock in 2010, today you’d be seeing a total return of 478.97%, which is impressive but nowhere near bitcoin’s meteoric rise. This isn’t to say that there haven’t been bumps in the road along the way. In late 2013, following the implosion of the Mt. Gox exchange, 80% of the currency’s value vanished over a 3 year decline. If you held onto your bitcoins through all of that, you deserve to be realizing ROI gains in the millions. Is this the best ROI of all time? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section.
