ITHACA, N.Y.(WENY)-- On May 22nd computer programmer, Laszlo Hanyecz, ordered two full pizzas from Papa John’s and paid 10,000 bitcoins which today would be equivalent to $598,900,000.00 and marked the first-ever transaction using the cryptocurrency. Since that day in 2010, May 22nd has been known as Bitcoin Pizza Day. 

Out of this story came Pizza DAO( Decentralized autonomous organization) which according to their website is: A group of passionate individuals that met in “The Room about Nothing” on Clubhouse and is aiming to feed the world on May 22nd through a collaborative art project. 

After a long discussion with Sam Weinrott, executive director of Rare Pizzas, about what his actual title was, he told me that the goal was to create a DAO that existed for pizza.

“ The DAO is this idea of distributed cooperation and consensus,” said Weinrott. “We want to make pizza better and closer to free, actually we want to make it free."

Essentially what Weinrott is doing, is creating a non-profit organization that serves the entire world and allows everyone to contribute. He and his team created ten thousand generative art pizzas and is auctioning them off through May 22nd with the hope of throwing the world's biggest pizza party. 

“We are going to develop the largest community of pizzioley in the known universe, we are going to digitize all of their pizza knowledge and we are going to create a free open source francheese and call it open pizza,” said Weinrott. 

Rare Pizza has only been around for seven weeks and it has already raised $700,000.00 that will go directly to local pizza shops, not just to help them get through the pandemic but also to feed the community. Every restaurant picked will receive a minimum of $500 to go directly to making pizza. 

“We just talk to the pizza place, we say hey we want to buy five hundred dollars worth of pizza on May 22nd, how do you want us to send you the money, and then we talk to them about how they intend to be giving it out, they can just comp their customers, we can talk to a local charity and arrange that,” said Weinrott.

Right now Rare Pizza is picking one pizza shop per city to donate $500 dollars for Bitcoin Pizza day. This money can be received through a check, PayPal or cryptocurrency and 

“We are trying to deliver on the dream that bitcoin promised, the idea of an organization like the Pizza DAO that exists to promote pizza as a non-profit entity,” said Weinrott.

Weinrott said this fundraiser is also meant to point out that the current financial system is not working very well. 

“There are a lot of people who are not getting the goods and services that they need and that's not because they don't deserve it, that's because our systems are not working,” said Weinrott.

Weinrott said in most cases it is not that the world is suffering from scarcity, there are just problems with the distribution 

“If the smart money is going to make that better if smart money is really going to reinvent financial systems in a way that serves the people of our planet better, then this is one of the ways it could do that,” said Weinrott.

Weinrott believes that if the world can come together for pizza, then it can come together for things like ocean relief, forest fires, and endangered species; using the same idea of the Pizza DAO. 

In commemoration of Bitcoin Pizza Day, the last virtual pizza that gets auctioned off will go for 10,000 bitcoin. 

If you have a local pizza shop you would like to sign up you can follow this link and if you want to bid on some virtual pizza art, you can follow this link.