On May 14, a rumor spread quickly on Twitter that the first real-world Bitcoin transaction might not have been for pizza, but instead for a JPEG.
This Twitter Space was FIRE
— Udi Wertheimer
We discovered that:the first purchase EVER with bitcoin was buying a JPEG for 500 BTC in Feb 2010
it pre-dates the the famous 10,000 BTC pizza
satoshi himself helped facilitate the JPEG sale
laser-eye cult in absolute SHAMBLES pic.twitter.com/b6ESOkbf0i
(@udiWertheimer) May 14, 2023
The Bitcoin supporter showed a screenshot of a tweet by independent developer Udi Wertheimer, who may have bought the first thing with Bitcoin before the famous Bitcoin Pizza.
The screenshot was taken on January 24, 2010, exactly four months before Bitcoin Pizza Day. On that day, a Bitcoin developer named Laszlo Hanyecz paid 10,000 Bitcoin for two pizzas. This is generally thought to be the first real-world Bitcoin transaction.
The picture shows a person named Sabunir trying to sell an image on the Bitcointalk site for 500 Bitcoin, which was equal to $1 at the time.
Even Satoshi Nakamoto, the person who came up with the idea for Bitcoin, seemed to want the sale to go well.
But a tweet from Mike McDonald, a former professional poker player who now invests in cryptocurrencies, shows a screenshot that suggests the Bitcoin transaction could have been a gift and that the JPEG was never “sold.” This makes the claim less likely. This is because the picture gives the impression that the JPEG was never “sold.”
I'm not sure if it has been dispelled yet but it seems like Sabunir's 500 btc was a donation rather than sale.
— Mike McDonald (@MikeMcDonald89) May 14, 2023
He posted his address for his NFT Jan 24, then posted it again in the btc logo thread on Feb 24. Feb 24 500 btc was sent, Feb 25 he thanks 2 people for donations 1/2 pic.twitter.com/6Rk9Ont9KU
In a second email, Wertheimer admitted that his first claim might not have been true. He said that Sabunir did put a JPEG for sale for 500 BTC, and they did get that amount at their address a month later. However, “it’s possible that the 500 BTC were sent as a donation for a different interaction” and the JPEG sale never happened.
Wertheimer says that we still don’t know what the 500 BTC were moved for because Sabunir hasn’t said for sure.
The rumor is related to the Bitcoin Ordinals phenomenon, which has led to the creation of more than 6.1 million photos, movies, and even tokens on the Bitcoin blockchain using the BRC-20 token standard as of the time of publishing.
Wertheimer has been a strong backer of Bitcoin non-fungible tokens (Bitcoin NFTs) since January 21, when Casey Rodamor released the Ordinals protocol, which lets users “inscribe” new data on the Bitcoin blockchain.
Wertheimer has been trying to bring more NFT fans to Bitcoin through an Ordinals project called Taproot Wizards. The name comes from the Taproot soft fork, which made it possible for the Ordinals protocol to be created in the first place.
Content Source: cointelegraph.com
