The Bitcoin pizza purchase wasn't a tragedy

I see a common sentiment among novice bitcoiners, they lament the ancient Bitcoin pizza purchase of 2010. Laszlo Hanyecz purchased two pizzas for 10,000 Bitcoin, or about $41 worth of Bitcoin at the time. At first blush a common refrain among people is to note the current price of 10,000 Bitcoin and say that Hanyecz spent gorzillians of dollars on two pizzas.

According to this line of thinking if you spend $41 worth of Bitcoin on pizza today and the price of Bitcoin doubles tomorrow you accidentally spent $82 on pizza. What is the issue with this line of thinking? Shouldn't you keep your bitcoins and just spend your U.S. dollars (which are really federal reserve notes but that's a different article)? Ah hah! There is the rub! You still have to relinquish the $41 worth of value. You can spend federal reserve notes (FRN), you can spend gold bouillon, you can spend anything, even Bitcoin Cash, but you have to relinquish the $41 worth of value in some form in order to get the pizza. It doesn't matter if you spend FRN because you still lost $41 worth of value and that $41 worth of value could have been spent on Bitcoin instead. So every purchase of every kind is an opportunity cost not just when you spend using Bitcoin. Hanyecz's pizzas were not the only $41 worth of value that didn't get stored as Bitcoin that year. The first Bitcoin transaction for real world goods is a beautiful thing, it was a proof of concept, it was a stepping stone toward a better world so we should really stop pretending like the Bitcoin pizza purchase was a tragedy.

• I want to thank Coindesk for the historical information and @Sajibb for reminding me of this topic

• I can't remember who originally put this form of thinking about money in my head, I probably developed it back in 2017 sometime.