Because of how huge and complex the blockchain is, the best and most enjoyable way to get into it is through the right crypto wallet app.
This tool that sits on your smart device allows you to authenticate purchases, manage your portfolio and explore over 90,000 trading pairs which cover a massive part of the cryptocurrency market, from the ever-ubiquitous Bitcoin to dedicated bespoke tokens.
Whilst the underlying technology is naturally very complex and wallets have become particularly feature-filled as the blockchain has expanded in scope, the principle behind them has remained as refreshingly simple as digital cash.
As with many crypto revolutions, it took a pioneer to test the principle, and it just so happened that this innovator in digital currency was very hungry indeed.
Wallets, Slices And Crusts
The first crypto wallet was designed by Satoshi Nakamoto as part of his Bitcoin white paper, and the concept behind his interpretation of a wallet was both exceptionally simple and had the potential to be broadly implemented.
All blockchain users have a pair of related cryptographic keys, known as a public key and a private key. The former is used to receive cryptocurrency and can be freely distributed and appear on the blockchain ledger, whilst the latter is used to access and send tokens.
At its simplest, a wallet stores these two keys and can theoretically be as simple as a piece of paper, although in practice wallets often do far more than this, becoming involved in the encryption and signing process or connecting to Web3 applications for authentication purposes.
These core principles, first published in 2009, still guide crypto to this day even as wallets increase in functionality, but it would take over a year for a purchase to be made with Bitcoin, as the result of a particularly hungry Florida-based early adopter.
On 21st May 2010, Laszlo Hanyecz made a thread on the early cryptocurrency forum Bitcoin Talk offering 10,000 Bitcoins (at the time worth $41 as another poster notes) in exchange for two large pizzas that were to be delivered to his home in Jacksonville, Florida.
Initially, he was happy with basically any type of pizza, including handmade ones, but ultimately a British user on the forum agreed to order the pizzas from Papa John’s website for a total price of $25 the following day.
This was a milestone, as it was the first time that a cryptocurrency was used in a purchase of a physical good, rather than a test purchase to prove the system works. As most early users were mining thousands of bitcoins a day, the high price made sense.
By proving the principle, the two pizzas were immortalised, and 22nd May is still celebrated in some crypto circles as Bitcoin Pizza Day, largely due to what would happen next.
Within months the price of Bitcoin started to rocket upward, and the 10,000 BTC went from $41 to over $600 within six months. By the end of the year, the pizzas were worth $2600 and were being discussed as the world’s most expensive pizzas.
As of 2024, the Bitcoin Pizzas are collectively worth £560m, which for context is a third of the operating revenue of the entire Papa John’s pizza chain and makes it by some significant distance the most expensive takeaway order ever made
Of course, Mr Hanyecz had absolutely no idea that any of this was going to happen and that his purchase was as groundbreaking as it was; whilst other transactions were alluded to in the thread, this was the first recorded BTC transaction and thus the proof of concept for Bitcoin.
He also has no regrets surrounding the purchase; whilst other people in the thread were questioning why he did not sit on top of a haul of tokens worth thousands and later millions, he noted that at the time the tokens were not worth anything and it was cool to be part of such an interesting experiment.
Without purchases like his, Bitcoin’s value proposition might have never been proven and without that, the crypto market as we know it today and apps such as Volta might not exist at all.
Without that, the versatility of modern wallets with multiple paths from fiat to crypto and
compatibility with a wide range of different chains and tokens would simply not exist and an entire market that has flourished over the past decade might possibly have never happened.
The modern decentralised finance world can be credited, at least in some small part, to a hungry Florida man.