We all know about the famous two-pizza buy for 10,000 BTC, which took place on March 22nd 2010. How was the network back then and what has changed?

I've gathered some data from Nasdaq and did some rookie charts for you fine folk.

On that day, there were only 300 transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain

It is insane to think on how early those people were. Yesterday's number of transaction was 975x higher. If you look at the chart, it does put things in perspective:

https://preview.redd.it/3gzjouao4xma1.png?1800&format=png&auto=webp&s=29d3c6a269a93d3b38fb57e0fae7e05261ff6cd9

Only 2.86 million BTC had been mined

This accounts for roughly 13.63% of the 21M Bitcoins that will ever exist.

https://preview.redd.it/tkdvdxcp4xma1.png?1800&format=png&auto=webp&s=c5249e6191616e1f1e462ce929fef9852116d8dc

There were only 299 unique addresses used on that day

As of yesterday, this number was 2195x times higher, with 656385 unique addresses used.

https://preview.redd.it/w057x29q4xma1.png?1800&format=png&auto=webp&s=d5c6f865ee7503ad9d0e261073873b136d82c671

Interesting to see that the number of unique addresses used correlates quite well with the number of transactions, at least visually.

TL;DR

Check the title of each section.

It is really nice to see how the network has developed after the first documented buy with BTC ever. Laszlo's pizza order put BTC into the news and set a landmark: you could trade it for goods. We have come a long way and have an even longer way to go!