This is Planet Money from NPR.
Back at the end of May, I went to a bar in Greenwich Village in New York City.
Hi, pleasure to meet you.
Welcome, welcome, welcome.
It's a Bitcoin bar where you can buy an actual beer with virtual currency.
This is a dive bar.
Yeah, but it looks really nice.
I would say we're a luxury dive bar.
So, you know, dive bars are approachable places for everybody.
The first person I meet is a guy named Mike Germano.
He's one of the people that runs this place.
It's called Hubkey and it's not normally open for lunch,
but it is today because so many people are here.
We're a little extra special Italian back there because it's pizza day,
the most important holiday in the Bitcoin calendar.
Today,
everyone is particularly jazzed
because it's the 15th anniversary of the very first time someone used Bitcoin to buy a thing.
And that thing was pizza.
There are stacks of pizza boxes in the back room where people are eating and I can smell the pies.