This Gamer Lost Big on Bitcoin — Even Worse Than Pizza Day

Key Notes

• Bitcoin Pizza Day might not be the first real-world BTC transaction.
• An anonymous Macedonian claims he used Bitcoin 17 years ago.
• North Macedonia still lacks clear crypto regulations.

An anonymous Macedonian dentist, who goes by Darko to stay private, claims he used Bitcoin

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earlier than the Bitcoin Pizza Day.

In an interview with Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN), Darko said that he used to compete for prizes in Bitcoin at the multiplayer online battle game DotA in the late 2000s.

“I was an 18-year-old kid; I didn’t take it seriously,” he added.

Darko, who is now a 35-year-old dentist, says he spent “10 or 20” BTC every month to purchase video games when he was a teenager.

However, competing for prizes doesn’t mean that Darko got paid to play DotA. The original DotA was a custom mod for Warcraft III, developed by the community, with no built-in payment systems. In simple terms, he was likely competing for informal community prizes.

Related article: Bitcoin Retail FOMO Not In Yet as BTC Price Hits $105,000Darko completely forgot about his Bitcoin spending until 2016, when he opened a dental clinic, and heard an employee pointing at mining digital gold.

If Darko’s claims are true, he and the DotA community were likely the first real-world Bitcoin users.

This would beat the Bitcoin Pizza Day, which happened on May 22, 2010, as the first documented real-world BTC transaction — programmer Laszlo Hanyecz paid 10,000 BTC to purchase two pizzas.

The historic transaction would now be worth over a billion dollars.

Despite the very early Bitcoin adoption from the country’s gamer community, North Macedonia still lacks a clear legal framework for cryptocurrencies.

Without clear rules, investors feel unsure, and this slows down the growth of crypto in the country.

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