It's Bitcoin Pizza Day!

Why it matters: Bitcoin Pizza Day commemorates the first time someone is known to have bought a real thing in the world using bitcoins, establishing the original digital currency as having some sort of real-world value, Brady writes.

• At the time, the bitcoin market put the dollar value of 10,000 BTC around $41.
• What the transaction established was that 5,000 BTC was worth a large Domino's pizza.

Flashback: On May 22, 2010, Laszlo Hanyecz arranged to pay Jeremy Sturdivant 10,000 BTC, if Sturdivant would, in turn, order two pizzas to be delivered to Hanyecz's house.

• Hanyecz suggested it on a Bitcoin forum, and they sorted the deal out over internet relay chat.
• It took Hanyecz four days to find a taker.
• The photos he took of the pizzas he bought live on via the Internet Archive.

Ever since — especially in market booms — media outlets have repriced the transaction at the current prices. See, for example, this 2021 MarketWatch story that prices the transaction at $3.8 billion. 🙄

Yes, but: Nothing actually works like that.

• 10,000 BTC really were worth two pizzas in May 2010. Just because you could buy 20,000 pizzas for 1 BTC today doesn't change the past.
• In 1962, Marvel Comics sold Amazing Fantasy #15 for 12 cents. Today, a copy of that comic in OK condition is worth about the same as 1 BTC.

So were the people at Marvel idiots for selling it for 12 cents then and not just keeping all the copies in their warehouses? Of course not. The issue is only worth that much because they sold it.

• Similarly, the market for bitcoins needed someone like Hanyecz and Sturdivant to make a real-world trade. It was a milestone for the instrument.

Quick take: Not only did Hanyecz not waste millions on two pizzas, those bitcoins would never have been worth much of anything if he or someone hadn't done something like that.

• A surefire way to drive bitcoin's price to $0 would be for everyone to sit on their holdings now as people keep trying to say that Hanyecz should have then.
• For his part, Hanyecz gets it.

Of note: It is easy for me to remember which day is Bitcoin Pizza Day because it happens to be my birthday as well. 🎈🧁

Here's a quick and easy way to see how much the world has changed.

This chart tracks transactions on the Bitcoin network on each Bitcoin Pizza Day (roughly, the dataset was a little less precise than daily), Brady writes

• As is evident, hardly anyone was using the network when Laszlo bought those two pies.
• Who knows how many pizzas have been bought with bitcoin since?

Gemini's tussle with Digital Currency Group over unpaid debts appears to be coming to a head, Crystal writes.

Driving the news: The crypto exchange founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss said that Barry Silbert's DCG did not pay roughly $630 million due last week, according to a statement published Friday on Gemini's website.

The intrigue: Gemini, along with DCG unit Genesis and two groups of creditors involved in Genesis's bankruptcy proceeding, is considering providing "forbearance" or temporary financial relief for DCG — that is if "the parties believe it will engage in good faith negotiations on a consensual deal."

• Otherwise, Gemini will work with creditors on a different plan for reorganization that it could advance with Genesis without DCG's "consensual participation," the crypto exchange said.
• Genesis in an emailed statement to Axios said that it was "working collaboratively" to address Digital Currency Group’s nonpayment.

Context: DCG, its unit Genesis Global Capital and Gemini have been locked in contention since FTX's collapse, which caused a chain reaction that put retail investors in the Winklevoss twins' crypto exchange Earn program in the lurch.

• Catch up quick: Genesis and Gemini are teaming up against DCG, with talks around a previously floated restructuring plan stalled.
• Laura Shin of the "Unchained" podcast earlier this month said mediation was out of the question, citing sources close to the matter.

The other side: "DCG continues to be engaged with the various stakeholders in the Genesis Capital restructuring process pursuant to the 30-day mediation period entered into by all parties on May 1," a DCG spokesperson said in a statement.

• DCG in its own update earlier this month said it was looking to refinance its debt and raise capital.

Quick take: The debtor of my debtor is my friend.

🌪 Sanctioned Ethereum privacy app Tornado Cash gets a hostile takeover by attackers. (Bloomberg)

💹 Little-known crypto exchange Hotbit announces it will close amid a difficult environment for traditional exchanges. (CoinDesk)

🇲🇾 Malaysia moves to boot crypto exchange Huobi from the country. (Decrypt)

The main stock exchange in Australia has dropped its plans to pivot to a blockchain-based system after [checks notes — wait, how can that possibly be right?] seven years of development, Brady writes.

Why it matters: It was one of the highest-profile examples of a major institution becoming seduced by a technological buzzword, way back before the 2017 initial coin offering boom.

Driving the news: Reuters reports that ASX Ltd has abandoned work that it paused after years and years of development.

• The project was paused late last year.

Details: The project ultimately spanned three CEOs, and the firm will end up writing off something like $164 million in wasted money on the project.

• Digital Asset Holdings of New York was commissioned to build out the project. The firm highlighted the partnership on its webpage.
• At first, the new software was being built without involving users, but it pivoted to involve lots of them.
• ASX's project was built on DAH's Daml platform.

What they're saying: "Executing large-scale implementation projects is extremely complex, regardless of the underlying technology. Just like any project, clear requirements, alignment on the objectives, and manageable milestones with defined success criteria are paramount," Digital Asset Holdings said in a statement on its website after the project was paused in November.

Yes, but: "It would have been easier, I guess, to just build a new version of CHESS in some other modern language, rather than blockchain," Ramy Aziz, a former ASX chief financial officer, told Reuters.

Quick take: The coverage makes it clear that whatever ASX tries to do, it's going to have a lot of stakeholders weighing in and voicing aspects of the system it needs to see built.

• It's widely understood that divergent points of view tend to make enterprise software buggy and difficult to use.
• Startups are frequently able to beat large companies in software development because they start with a simple clear vision and add features later.

The bottom line: It should never take seven years to find out if a new software stack is going to work or not.