10000=$15=$350000000

On this date 11 years ago, a guy paid a pizza delivery person 10,000 Bitcoins for two pizzas.  Cost, $15.  Today, those Bitcoins are worth $350,000,000.  I read this on the Coinbase blog.

I have to assume he had a mining operation and was able to generate more pretty easily.

One of the things great internet companies have been able to do is create something out of meaningless dreck or data.  They take free commoditized stuff, add value, and people want it.  I was thinking about that when I was cutting up a birch tree in the forest near my cabin.  This big old birch fell down.  It was probably 25 inches in diameter at its base.  Had to be 40-60 feet tall.

To most people that big old birch is worthless.  They are just happy it didn’t hit their house.  If a forest fire came through, it would be a huge fire hazard and add fuel to the fire.  Over time as it decomposes it’s worth something to the bugs and the forest soil.  In its more immediate future, it’s going to be worth something to me after I split it and age it to heat my cabin.  My neighbor has a lathe, and he’s going to do some woodworking with it.

You can’t eat Bitcoin.  You can’t spend it.  It’s actually pretty useless unless you speculate in it.  Nassim Taleb thinks it’s today’s dutch tulip bulb and it may in fact be just that. I own some and I buy a little each month.  I also buy Ethereum, Filecoin, and mine Helium.  I use the Brave browser and earn their token.  But, some cryptos that are being developed are putting some applications that are useful behind them.  If they can build networks and the network effects that come with them, they could be more valuable than Bitcoin.

Which one will shoot the moon?  I don’t know.  One thing I think will happen is people will hold their coins a lot longer waiting for a rally.  Some will go up in value, but most probably won’t and the people holding will look more like bag holders than “investors”.  But my gut says it’s going to have a strong use case behind it that is ubiquitous in nature.  Ideally, people will be using the network without even knowing it.

Let’s hope the pizza guy gave the consumer a tip.

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